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Talakeal
2016-01-13, 12:31 PM
So I finally started the campaign I have been asking for help with for the last couple months. I ran two adventures, the first went really well, the rest went really badly.

So the players are young people who have been raised in an isolated farming village on the edge of a great forest, yearning for something more out of life. They go on an expedition into the forest and find an ancient haunted tower.

They slowly discover that the land they live in was, three hundred years ago, a Murder like wasteland and domain of the BBEG of my previous campaign. Two centuries ago a crusade attempted to cleanse the wasteland, defeated a powerful lich who lived in this tower, and then succumbed to the environment, dying in this tower unable to leave and eventually resorting to cannibalism.

They found the liches tomb, as well as documents talking about how they imprisoned the lich and then bound his phylactery, though they don't find the phylactery itself (they are injured and decided to turn back with only a single room unexplored, the one where the phylactery is hidden.)

They kill some monsters, get some loot, explore a haunted castle, and overall have a great time. So far so good.


The second adventure starts with them back in their village recovering from their previous adventure. A massive host of savage humanoids appears in the night on the hill overlooking the village and gives the villagers three days to disperse before they destroy the town. The townsfolk are vastly outnumbered, and the local lord tells the people to flee and tells his soldiers not to fight, then disappears to his hunting lodge.

Now here is where the problem arose, as the game went into a more sandbox mode without clear direction, I let the PCs come up with their own plan. I wrote out a few of the more likely scenarios, but was open to accepting other good plans.

The scenarios I planned for:

The PCs somehow use magic to compel the ghosts haunting the dungeon from their previous adventure to defend the village.

The PCs track down rumors of a nearby bronze dragon and enlist its help.

The pcs free the lich and use its phylactery to compel it to destroy the invaders.

The PCs track down the druid who purified the land and bound the liches heart in the first place. (The PCs kind of ignored the plot hook, a cursed grove, that would have led them to the druid during the previous adventure, getting creeped out and leaving rather than investigating).

I also anticipated the possibility of the party (all of chaotic alignment) joining the raiders rather than fighting them, and had a scenario for that planned out.

And lastly convincing the local lord to stay and fight, which would have been the hardest option, but still doable.



Ok, so the first day the players spend convincing e local sheriff and many of the local farmers to stay and fight for their land and booby trapping the town. The sorceress spends all of her magic making animated objects to defend the town. The party sends a runner to the nearest city and ask the local king for help, he tells them that he won't risk his army defending a relatively unimportant farming town, but its people are welcome to hole up in his castle and he will then help them rebuild when the danger is past.


The second day the players do nothing and wait until nightfall. They sneak into the raiders camp and burn their tents, killing a few and leaving them low on supplies. The party is caught on the way out and taken before their leader. He tells them that humans have controlled the world for the last thousand years, and that he has been chosen by the gods of the humanoid races to cull the human population and bring the various races back into balance. He lacks the strength to destroy major cities, so instead he will destroy the farming communities across the empire to bring about a famine.

The players try and argue the morality, ho or, or logic of his actions and pull a captain Kirk, but he tells them that his task was given to him by the gods and is built into his very nature, he doesn't care about the deeper philosophical implications, he is running on instinct. He offers the party a place at his side and lets them, go, telling them they have one day and two nights before the attack begins.

The third morning the players, with a little ooc nudging from me, decide to investigate the local lord. They find him drunk in his hunting lodge. Long story short, he made a deal with an outsider to save his dying daughters life many years ago in exchange for him doing nothing when this day came. The party lacks the social skills to convince him to break his pact.

The lord has a pack of hunting griffons. One player wants to ride them, and I explain that griffons in this setting are much smaller than normal than d&d and can't fly while carrying a full size human. He then wants to steal them and make them defend the town. I tell him it is a good idea, but the party lacks any sort of ability to deal with animals, and indeed the sorceress has a background element that animals dislike her innately. They won't be able to command the griffons, and attempting to retrieve them will likely get the players beat up for no good reason.


The next morning the local sage returns from a visit to the library in the nearest city. She tells the players a bit more about what she has learned about their attackers, and that they are much more dangerous than they seem, having apparent supernatural backing. She tells the players that the town can't hold out against them on its own, a d that they players need to do something desperate if they are to save the town.

Then comes the hurt. The players spend about two hours OOC doing nothing. Eventually they give up and I give them an OOC nudge that maybe they should go back to the haunted tower.

They do, and they find the phylactery. One player suggests freeing the lich, but the others shout him down. They spend another hour doing nothing but half heartedly trying to find a way to communicate with the then decide to leave and go fight the invaders to their last breath, at which point I reach across the screen and tell them that the NPC wasn't lying, if they try and fight without help they will all die.

Eventually they give in and wake the lich like the one player wanted.

Long story slightly less long, the lich drives off the invaders and the party defends the town without a single casualty. But at this point they are too frustrated and pissed off to really enjoy the battle or the victory that follows.


So we ended the session. All of the players assured me everything was ok at the time, but in talking to each of them one on one since they have explained their frustrations. Here is the thing though, they each told me something completely different.

Player A said they didn't like the feeling of helplessness. They play RPGs to be a hero, and doesn't like the idea of a problem to big for the PCs to handle alone, and therefore dismissed any plan that involved asking an NPC for help, and was frustrated that the scenario didn't cater to that style.

Player B wanted me to railroad more. He felt that by letting them waste their precious time limit (he was also pissed that there was a time limit and said that makes everything more frustrating) doing minor things, and when the sage told them it wouldn't be enough he completely stopped caring and didn't even bother to try coming up with more plans. He told me in the future he wants me to make it plainly obvious which paths will be successful before letting the players waste their time trying to find their own solution.

Player C, on the other hand, said I railroaded too much. He was mad that there seemed to be only certain resolutions I had in mind and didn't let them explore other options. He was mad that, for example, I told them their griffon plan wouldn't work rather than letting them try. In other words, almost the complete opposite of player Bs complaint.
This player also wanted to simply abandon the mission like half a dozen times throughout the session, basically every time there was a setback no matter how minor, and got pissed when the other players said they wanted to see it through and I said that this was the only adventure I had planned.


And now I am kicking myself. I planned. This adventure for so long, and I saw the weakness of this decision point, but I couldn't figure out a way to fix it.

So, anyone got any advice on how I can avoid similar situations in the future without going full on railroad or improv DM? Nothing kills a session like the players not knowing where to go, but I can't think of a way to eliminate such points in RPGs while leaving the players with even the illusion of choice.

Help?

GloatingSwine
2016-01-13, 12:45 PM
Player A was probably closest to the underlying idea they were all having.

They didn't win the adventure, they just pressed the button that turned on the winning machine (the Lich). (Player B wanted the button to be clearly labelled so they didn't "waste time" with nonfunctional plans, and Player C wanted their plans to be able to work at least sometimes, all of your prepared scenarios are "the players get someone to win their battle for them".)

The setup for your adventure suggested a Seven Samurai type outcome where plucky villagers plus a few experienced hands stave off the bandit army (and this is clearly what the players were attempting to do, convincing the villagers to stay and setting up defences), but that wasn't what came out of it, and what did come out was something where the players didn't feel like their characters mattered too much because the big bad Lich did the real work.

Giving them the expected Seven Samurai scenario wouldn't have been bad, especially for a new group of adventurers, they would feel like their plan bore fruit, and they have a reasonable jumping off point as characters to move away from their village to make their fortunes in the big bad world.

Talakeal
2016-01-13, 01:04 PM
Player A was probably closest to the underlying idea they were all having.

They didn't win the adventure, they just pressed the button that turned on the winning machine (the Lich). (Player B wanted the button to be clearly labelled so they didn't "waste time" with nonfunctional plans, and Player C wanted their plans to be able to work at least sometimes)

The setup for your adventure suggested a Seven Samurai type outcome where plucky villagers plus a few experienced hands stave off the bandit army (and this is clearly what the players were attempting to do, convincing the villagers to stay and setting up defences), but that wasn't what came out of it, and what did come out was something where the players didn't feel like their characters mattered too much because the big bad Lich did the real work.

Giving them the expected Seven Samurai scenario wouldn't have been bad, especially for a new group of adventurers, they would feel like their plan bore fruit, and they have a reasonable jumping off point as characters to move away from their village to make their fortunes in the big bad world.

So your saying it has to do with not meeting expectations rather than a matter of railroading? Hmm, had not thought about that, good point.

The idea was that there was all this ancient history and power around the region that the adults had never bothered to notice or even believe in. The players were the only ones with the courage and curiosity to actually explore their homes.

While the seven samurai is a good idea for a game, that wasnt what I had intended to run. The players werent seven samurai, they were three local teenagers. I even told them when they were making their characters that the game would be more like "The Goonies" than the "A-team".

Any idea how I can communicate ideas like that better in the future, or how to prompt the players to tell me they arent interssted in playing the game I am pitching?

CharonsHelper
2016-01-13, 01:09 PM
I think that both B & C are sort of right.

You should have either

1. Had a single obvious answer to the problem so that the players knew what you wanted.

2. Given the players option and have the players figure out what they wanted and worked with them to make it work.

3. Have a fight be inevitable (perhaps at a pass where opposing numbers are limited), but have all of the secondary things that they do give them bonuses towards said fight.

It sounds like you fell into the (easy to do) trap of wanting to do a sandbox, and planning out what you thought would be the obvious solutions, and trying to steer them towards your planned solutions. It's the method that sandbox video games go with, but it's a different medium, and I don't think that it translates well to tabletop.

Frankly - I think that sandbox games are freakin' hard to pull off well, so I generally avoid them. I need stuff planned out and can't figure out major things on the fly, but I know people that swear by them, and it seems to be more of working with the players to come up with a story than trying to plan out all potential options they might pick. (I'm not sure D&D is the best system for that method either.)

OldTrees1
2016-01-13, 01:17 PM
To extract and restate the players' frustrations:
1) The power gap between the side they were allied with and the side they allied against was larger than they liked.
2) There was a time limit that created pressure magnifying frustrations.

3) The players were lacking information to have their choices be meaningful choices(impact + information).
4) Your handling of plans that would not work.
5) Unanticipated plans had spot DCs too high for your players.

#1-2 are more about playstyle and play preference than about DM skill so while you should remember them, I am going to skip them.

#3-5 are quite interconnected and can be reduced through DM skill. They are also frequent problems to surmount when it comes to sandbox and sandbox-like campaigns. It boils down to sufficient communication that the players can draw conclusions. This is an area I am still working on myself.

First, most anticipated details follow the rule of 3 hints:1 conclusion (but have some variety for verisimilitude). The Druid option was invisible to the players since the 1 hint about the druid being an option was in the grove that they skipped. Remember that you need enough of these (your 6 was a good number) anticipated options that it doesn't seem like you have "only one" in mind.

Second, you need to detail your world well enough that plans you don't anticipate/see can be visible to the players. This is hard and is the area I am still incrementing on. My current solution is to know my world well enough that I can quickly derive answers to player questions thus giving answers untainted by metagame concerns. However that solution requires the players to imagine possible solutions and then ask to see if something like that exists so it relies on creative & curious players and does not play well with hard time limits (so instead I have soft time limits where taking too long results in degrees of failure but being faster results in degrees of success).

Third, for all options be they anticipated or unexpected, your description of the scenario needs to convey some pros/cons and the relative chance of success but needs to do so by showing relevant information not directly telling. Player C felt you were telling them it would not work. Player B felt he could not judge chance of success based upon your attempt at showing relevant information.

GloatingSwine
2016-01-13, 01:19 PM
So your saying it has to do with not meeting expectations rather than a matter of railroading? Hmm, had not thought about that, good point.

Yeah, with a side order of "the DM's awesome magic macguffin beats the DM's invincible foe (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2109)"


While the seven samurai is a good idea for a game, that wasnt what I had intended to run. The players werent seven samurai, they were three local teenagers. I even told them when they were making their characters that the game would be more like "The Goonies" than the "A-team".

No, they'd mostly be in the role Katsuhiro was in the film, the eager inexperienced one who wants to learn. You could have adapted it into eg. the local lord does nothing about the bandits because secretly he's being paid off by them, which he doesn't have to pay scutage out of to his liege so it fattens his pocket directly and so he's double dipping on taxing the villages, but there are a few good men left among his knights and they come to help in secret, giving the players a bit more punch (make them a resource the players can use themselves, not DMPCs, again you aren't trying to outshine the players)

Really though, what they wanted was a win of their own, which is not unreasonable for a new group of adventurers, and I think that's the big source of Player C's complaints, because he wanted one of their plans to be able to win.

GrayDeath
2016-01-13, 01:39 PM
Overall it seems to me that it was a combination of not being on the same page regarding the intended feel/Mood of the Campaign (something that happejned to me a LOT when Is tarted, I always planned a far more detailed, research-heavy, deeper Story than the players experienced until I learned to put out 3times as many clues as I thought needed), and the old "only the DMs Characters/Maccguffins/Ideas will solve the plot".
WHich, unless it is a purely investigative Campaing, is bound to cause trouble.
Yes, even in a "beginners" campaign.

My suggestion, if you and your players continue, would be to make it clearer ooc what you all want to experience, and adapt accordingly.
Also do not shut down players Ideas just because you did not think of them. That cannot be said often enough.

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-01-13, 05:02 PM
I think that both B & C are sort of right.

What this boatman says.

Puzzle-like situations in RPG's are hard. There are a lot of pieces on the board and the players rarely have a good overview of all of them. They usually miss even pretty major things about the world. Like how griffons are like falcons, not flying horses. That's not a bad thing, but it does add to the difficulty of figuring out how to use this environment to win.

In fact, the griffon situation as a whole is probably a good example. You give the players the hint that they should go check out this dude in his hunting lodge. All he can give them is the reason that he's not helping (to be fair, you planned for them being able to convince him with better dice rolls, but they don't know that). They look around if there's some way in which they could use that information, or if there's something else here they can use. After all, you gave them the hint to go look. They see the griffons. First it turns out that you're using the term griffon to mean something completely different from what they're imagining, but they're still dangerous creatures that might be able to help. But their attempts to get them to help are pretty much preemptively shot down.

And that's the point where you could have thrown them a bone. Let them talk the guy into sending these animals with them, or let them lure them with food, let them find a stable hand in the village who can help them win the animals' trust. Or just let the gryphons fly up in fear as a large dark shape flies over towards those dark caves a little further on.

Because that's another example. It's not enough to have a dragon, the PC's need to be able to find out there is one without going looking for it. This problem does not immediately scream "maybe a dragon lives nearby who can help us". (How clear were the rumors? Did they scream "hint, hint"?) All in all, I think that's the main factor here, not that there aren't enough ways to achieve their goals, but that there are too few paths (for this group of players and characters in this setting etc) to them. They have to make some pretty big mental leaps to conclude that maybe yesterdays ghost would be powerful enough to beat today's challenge, even though they won yesterday and today they're being warned they can't win this. If you have to make it as unsubtle as NPC's almost literally pointing them towards solutions, so be it. The session becomes legendry if they figure the perfect solution out completely unprovoked, but it's no fun at all as long when they don't figure anything out. Things happening that push them in the right direction are way better than 2 OOC hours of doing nothing.

sktarq
2016-01-13, 06:24 PM
In part, I think a change of presentation at the beginning could have been a big help. You pulled a bit of a bait a switch on the PC (unintentionally) you gave them a problem to solve (the 3 day warning humanoid army) and a semi-closed list of solutions (almost all of which involved bringing in a third power). Thing is 3 to 1 on good defensive ground with time to prep is not impossible odds. It is with a reach (if a stretch) with palisades etc. If you had gone bigger and basically made clear that they were doomed from the get go unless they get help. Then the adventure is about finding options, selecting, and convincing the help. "You must find help young ones-go" is a totally fair adventure seed, but you let them think they had other options which really they didn't have.

Jay R
2016-01-13, 06:47 PM
I wrote out a few of the more likely scenarios, but was open to accepting other good plans.

Being open to accepting the PCs' plans isn't enough. You also have to actually accept one of them. Their plans were:



Ok, so the first day the players spend convincing e local sheriff and many of the local farmers to stay and fight for their land and booby trapping the town. The sorceress spends all of her magic making animated objects to defend the town.

The party sends a runner to the nearest city and ask the local king for help, ...

The players try and argue the morality, ho or, or logic of his actions and pull a captain kirk, ....

The lord has a pack of hunting griffons. One player wants to ride them, ....

... then decide to leave and go fight the invaders to their last breath, ...

These were their plans, and you wouldn't accept any of them.


Eventually they give in and wake thr lich...

Note that this was originally your plan, and that you had to reach across the table and tell them to go do it.

A is correct. They were helpless, because everything that used their abilities failed. None of your possible endings required the fighter to draw a sword, or the wizard to cast a spell.

B is correct. They spent lots of time spinning their wheels trying things that couldn't work, without any way to know that they were wasting their time.

C is correct. Everything they tried was ruled out, and they were nudged into your plan. They obviously didn't get enough clues that a druid or dragon might help.

If you are going to let them come up with their own plan, something they should come up with should work. If you have a set plan, or set of possible plans, then they should include their abilities, and they should have more clues to it.

Talakeal
2016-01-13, 07:40 PM
Being open to accepting the PCs' plans isn't enough. You also have to actually accept one of them. Their plans were:




These were their plans, and you wouldn't accept any of them.



Note that this was originally your plan, and that you had to reach across the table and tell them to go do it.

A is correct. They were helpless, because everything that used their abilities failed. None of your possible endings required the fighter to draw a sword, or the wizard to cast a spell.

B is correct. They spent lots of time spinning their wheels trying things that couldn't work, without any way to know that they were wasting their time.

C is correct. Everything they tried was ruled out, and they were nudged into your plan. They obviously didn't get enough clues that a druid or dragon might help.

If you are going to let them come up with their own plan, something they should come up with should work. If you have a set plan, or set of possible plans, then they should include their abilities, and they should have more clues to it.

I'm confused here, it seems like you are saying that I should accept every plan the players come up with, even when it would make no sense.

All of the plans you quoted either relied on skills the players didnt have or things that were simply too small to have an impact on the situation.

Hypothetically, what would you do if the players in your game decided to slay a red dragon by throwing a stick at it (despite it having hundreds of HP), hitting it with a fireball (despite it being immune to fire), talking it into giving the players it hoard without a fight (despite only having a six charisma and no social skills), or casting power word kill on it despite being only a second level mage?

CharonsHelper
2016-01-13, 07:57 PM
I'm confused here, it seems like you are saying that I should accept every plan the players come up with, even when it would make no sense.

All of the plans you quoted either relied on skills the players didnt have or things that were simply too small to have an impact on the situation.

Hypothetically, what would you do if the players in your game decided to slay a red dragon by throwing a stick at it (despite it having hundreds of HP), hitting it with a fireball (despite it being immune to fire), talking it into giving the players it hoard without a fight (despite only having a six charisma and no social skills), or casting power word kill on it despite being only a second level mage?

Except - in those cases it's obvious that they would fail.

The things which the players in this case attempted were NOT obviously doomed to fail, yet you treated them as such. Either you should have made it so that they WEREN'T doomed to fail, or made it far more obvious that they were hopeless gestures. As it was, it sounds like your players spent a lot of time spinning their wheels doing things which you'd already decided were pointless (but were in no way obviously pointless).

The Glyphstone
2016-01-13, 08:02 PM
Then you scripted the campaign poorly from the beginning. You, as the DM, decide both the scope and scale of the opposition. To counter your hypothetical example, if the best weapon your players personally have is a stick, and they are only second level, then you screwed up on a gigantic scale by making them fight a CR13+ dragon (the range at which hundreds of HP on a Red Dragon start). It doesn't matter that they could go ask the CR13+ Gold Dragon in the next cave over to do their fighting for them, or go to the level 20 wizard in a nearby tower and ask him to do their fighting for them, or perform a summoning ritual to awaken the forgotten ghost of the level 20 barbarian king to do their fighting for them. All are pre-scripted solutions that force the players into pre-determined outcomes (player C hates this), none of which actually give the players any agency (player A hates this).

You say you pitched the campaign to them as the Goonies. The kids did not run away and get their parents to fight the Fratellis for them - they defeated the bad guys and found the treasure all by themselves. If that is what the players were expecting, you didn't deliver, so this one is on you unfortunately.


(My initial reaction before reading was going to be "you went wrong by playing in Bizarro Gaming World, as usual", but the players are honestly coming across as pretty reasonable this time.)

Now, for constructive advice...learn from this. You now know how your players think, what they expect and what they like. Prepare for that. You'll do better in Round 2.

AMFV
2016-01-13, 08:04 PM
I'm confused here, it seems like you are saying that I should accept every plan the players come up with, even when it would make no sense.


Not every, just at a minimum one. If your players are coming up with as many varied and interesting plans as yours were, you should encourage that. Even if those plans don't completely resolve the situation you can have them help, or have them provide insight that may resolve the situation. If your players want to ride griffons for example, help them figure out a way to help.



All of the plans you quoted either relied on skills the players didnt have or things that were simply too small to have an impact on the situation.


Not necessarily, booby trapping the town is certainly liable to help. Talking and diplomacy is likely to help, pointing out to the non-human leader that the town isn't going to be the easy mark he thought it was when he made the deal may cause him to reconsider (after all battles are risky, they consume resources, if he might lose some of his forces, he may move on to an easier mark). Sending for help isn't likely to be too small either.

Those are ALL workable solutions to the problem, admittedly some might require some additional stuff on part of the players, but then you'd just need to let them know that. You basically only accepted one set of actions, those that you devised.

I would recommend this:

Don't, I say again, DON'T Plan ahead. Create the basic scenario, then organically develop it, it'll be more difficult, but if this is your problem, then the answer is to force yourself out of the mindset that only one solution will work, create a problem that you don't know the solution to. Then if the players come up with something that won't work, talk to them until they figure out a way to make that solution work. After all a fireball may not work on a Red Dragon, but a Ball of Cold might. Throwing a stick at it won't, but shooting a sharpened black one through it's weak point would. Finger of Death is unreachable to 2nd level mages, unless they have a scroll., So they quest to find said scroll. Even a person with a Charisma of 6 can make a compelling argument if the argument is a bribe, or a sufficiently interesting threat. A person with low charisma could still figure out what the Dragon wants and bribe them.

DaveOTN
2016-01-13, 08:31 PM
It can be very difficult in a pen & paper roleplaying game to realize where the gap is between what you're imagining and what the player are imagining, especially since both mental images are coming from the same words. For example, one of the most frustrating roleplaying sessions I've ever played in (as a player) involved our party facing off against a major villain, who was busy making some sort of evil concoction in a foul-smelling bubbling cauldron. The battle raged on, the fighter fell victim to a hold person spell, the ranger was knocked out, and my wizard had run out of useful spells - so, in desperation, my character ran up and tried to push over the cauldron, spilling out the evil liquid and at least disrupting whatever ritual the villain was in the middle of. Or at least he tried to, only to be told, "You can't budge it. It weighs hundreds of pounds. [The bad guy] casts Inflict moderate wounds on you."

Remember, the players expect to be challenged, but they expect you to give them beatable challenges, and they will generally try their best to beat them in ways that make sense to them. I wouldn't have wasted a turn trying to push over a cauldron if I realized it was actually a solid stone unholy water font - which was what my DM had in mind - and your players wouldn't have wasted their first day on a Seven Samurai scenario if they hadn't thought that might have been a reasonable response to your scenario. That means your players probably underestimated what exactly a "massive horde" meant - did you give them numbers? Do they know how many people are in their town? 5000 orcs may seem beatable to a player that thinks that a "small farming town" has 2500 adults in it (as it might, in modern Indiana) and doesn't realize that in the middle ages that town has about 50 people able to lift a sword. If you realized this was happening, you could have just pointed it out directly ("hold on, guys, I don't think I explained this very well") or you could put it in to the mouths of the villagers ("There's no way we'll beat those orcs - we're outnumbered 100 to 1"). After all, their local lord ordered them to flee - so essentially every villager the PCs persuaded to stay behind was reinforcing their belief that "staying and fighting" was a realistic bet to make.

Second, as other posters have said, the sabotage attacks on the raider camp, and the moral arguments with their leader, were both good plans and the players had no way of knowing otherwise. Sure, you knew that the orc chieftain had received word straight from his god, but I doubt you mentioned that to the players - so their second night's work should have been rewarded somehow. I think this is where the players got frustrated - not so much that they guessed wrong, but that guessing wrong didn't get them any closer to an answer. I can see two possible ways to reward the players here, depending on how much you wanted to wing this adventure. If you decide in the moment to go the Seven Samurai route, then let the chieftain give his speech about his god, but let the players know that there seems to be some dissension in the ranks. Although the chieftain is firm in his belief, they notice small bands breaking off and riding home every so often over the course of the next two days - it seems their preaching did have some effect after all. Now they have to see if it was enough... On the other hand, if you want to stick with your original plan, have the orc chieftain let slip that no living man could dissuade him from his quest - he fears nothing that breathes - he knows he'll win this fight because the town has no necromancer - etc. etc. You may have to ladle it on pretty thick here. Remember that PCs will tend to think there's no connection between adventures unless you make it explicitly clear that there is one - your party probably has closed their mental file on that whole lich incident and is prepared not to think of it again unless you hit them over the head with it. In this case, though, you're trying to let the characters make that last connection - the chieftain is scared of undead - the lich! It's always easier in hindsight, of course, but if you can think of a few ways to have NPCs make the suggestion instead of just hinting at them out of character, it'll help preserve their agency.

Finally, just remember that the PCs know almost nothing of your plans, which means they can be changed right up until the moment they're revealed. And you can always stash them away for later. If it becomes apparent that the PCs think they've got a winnable fight up ahead against 200 bandits, but you actually had 1000 trolls led by a demon in mind, don't be afraid to just stash those trolls away for later and play the bandit fight the players are preparing for. You can always lead them back to the lich tower a couple adventures later.

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-13, 08:39 PM
Hypothetically, what would you do if the players in your game decided to slay a red dragon by throwing a stick at it (despite it having hundreds of HP), hitting it with a fireball (despite it being immune to fire), talking it into giving the players it hoard without a fight (despite only having a six charisma and no social skills), or casting power word kill on it despite being only a second level mage?

Honestly? I'd let them try. Maybe they have a cunning plan to steal a scroll of PW: Kill from the local mages' guild, maybe the stick is made of a highly acidic substance (...they also stole really tough gloves when raiding the mages guild), maybe they have the cash to buy a potion of glibness. Or maybe they fail and die, I don't actually know until they try. Maybe they get a massive critical with a bulk-standard twig.

You're also not letting players have A WIN when the PCs can't get THE WIN. The horde overruns the kingdom's towns, but the PCs protect the village until harvest time. The villain kills the king, but the PCs spirit away the crown with the gem of royal power. Lesser victories, but still victories, all without Archemage Overshadow coming along. The important thing is to let the players try their plan even if it shouldn't succeed, because when has a story made 'and the powerful wizard single handedly saved everybody including the protagonists' entertaining? (LotR doesn't count, he brings an army with him)

Jay R
2016-01-13, 08:39 PM
I'm confused here, it seems like you are saying that I should accept every plan the players come up with, even when it would make no sense.

Don't be silly. It's impossible to accept every plan; you're only going to play the scenario once.

But something they come up with should work, or they aren't part of the game.


All of the plans you quoted either relied on skills the players didn't have or things that were simply too small to have an impact on the situation.

If anything, that's understated. In fact, anything that could solve this situation relied on skills or powers the players didn't have, because every ability they had was too small to have an impact on the situation. Look at your original set of possibilities. Each one is finding somebody else to solve a situation the PCs are incapable of affecting.


Hypothetically, what would you do if the players in your game decided to slay a red dragon by throwing a stick at it (despite it having hundreds of HP), hitting it with a fireball (despite it being immune to fire), talking it into giving the players it hoard without a fight (despite only having a six charisma and no social skills), or casting power word kill on it despite being only a second level mage?

Exactly - a perfect analogy. If I send a red dragon after a party with only sticks for weapons, no social skills and only a second level mage, nothing they do should work. But that's not their fault; it's because I sent a red dragon after a party that can't face it.

Yes, maybe they can talk a Lich, ghost, bronze dragon, druid or lord to come fight the red dragon instead. Then that high-level character (the lich, in this case) is playing D&D, while the 2nd level mage and his friends get to watch.

neonchameleon
2016-01-13, 09:15 PM
I'm confused here, it seems like you are saying that I should accept every plan the players come up with, even when it would make no sense.

All of the plans you quoted either relied on skills the players didnt have or things that were simply too small to have an impact on the situation.

All the plans quoted are perfectly sensible ones based on a reasonable assumption of Goonies level opposition and information that would be available to the PCs. Shut them down the way you did and you'll get player-PTSD where they never try anything interesting. Reasonable looking plans don't have to work - they just have to have a chance of working and to not lead to utter catastrophe when they fail.

You say you wanted to run a Goonies style adventure? Your description of the adventure really doesn't fit - as others have pointed out neither the massive host nor the "Watch the NPCs be awesome" fit. So I'm going to give you one.

A group of ogres the size of the party kidnap the kid brother/sister of one of the PCs, planning to eat them tomorrow (make it an ogre religious celebration if nothing else).

Why?

First, none of the PCs is a match for an ogre. For that matter two PCs should struggle badly against an ogre - but the party working together should be able to bring an ogre down without too much trouble. It's a bullying and intimidating threat without being utterly overwhelming. The PCs need to even the odds.

Second, ogres are stupid. This makes them fun. It also means that they are vulnerable to relatively silly threats. The plans need to be plausible, not necessarily good and slapstick comedy works (very much in keeping with a Goonies style).

So how do the PCs handle it? Basically you do not plan this part. The challenge is manageable with a relatively generous GM but the PCs need to plan and even the score.

If the PCs go to help from the militia, the militia's busy (and has written off the kid - meaning the PCs will be even bigger heroes when they come back) - but a good enough diplomacy roll will get help from the town drunk. Who turns out to be a retired soldier and when the rescue starts he turns up in full plate with a heavy shield. Sure, he can't hit the broad side of a barn door. But the ogres are going to struggle to hit him (especially as he fights defensively), and he's foul mouthed enough to attract attention from at least one (effectively lowering the ogre numbers by one because one of them's busy pounding on him). If he survives he either tries to sort himself out or gives the PCs his armour as loot, and if he dies his last words involve thanking the PCs for letting him go to Valhalla.

If the PCs try to trap the ogres, ogres are stupid. They won't get them all. But whittling numbers down by one is good. The same goes for starting fights using ventriloquism.

The basic point here is the PCs want plans and several of them, all with a good chance of success but without ending the adventure. And if the PCs come up with something ridiculous like two PCs, one on the shoulders of the other, wearing a flaming storm cloak to take advantage of the ogre religious rites, go for it! That sort of stuff is hilarious when it works - and even more hilarious when it fails* (preferably after the kid brother is free).

But whatever you do for this sort of plot, let the PCs come up with the plans. Don't pre-prepare them. And make the opposition look manageable. A DMPC should never ever be the one solving the problem.

* The version my PCs managed was dressing up as emissaries of Blipbloppool, God of Troglodytes (with the hard part being getting themselves to smell bad enough to pose as emmissaries). It was working ... until they realised none of them spoke the right language.

John Longarrow
2016-01-13, 09:34 PM
The scenarios I planned for:

The PCs somehow use magic to compel the ghosts haunti g the dungeon from thekr previous adventure to defend the village.

The PCs track dowm rumors of a nearby bronze dragon and enlist its help.

The pcs free the liche and use its phylactory to compel it to destroy the invaders.

The PCs track down the druid who purified the land and bound the liches heart in the first place. (The PCs kind of ignored the plot hook, a cursed grove, that wouls have led them to the druid during the previous adventure, getting creeped out and leaving rather than investigating).

I also anticipated the possibility of the party (all of chaotic alignment) joining the raiders rather than fighting them, and had a scenario for that planned out.

And lastly convincing the local lord to stay and fight, which would have been the hardest option, but still doable.


So you never thought the party may try to gank the leader? That's the first thing several groups I know would try. Take out the leader early then see if you can get rid of the rest. Evil hordes tend to fall apart quickly without firm leadership.

It also makes a very big statement about your style of play. You had it in your mind before the players showed up that nothing the characters do can directly affect the outcome. There are very few times a DM should bring out this kind of action.l For the most part this screams 'plot requirement' and the players should have a LOT of foreshadowing it will occur. If you had been seeding the party with information about all of the big guys they could call on for several sessions plus gave them a solid reason why they are the ones to choose the towns savior, this could be workable. From the sounds of it the players had no clue their direct actions would be useless.

As DM though, how would you have handled the party trying to sneak in and assassinate the head of the horde? What would you have done to either help or hinder the party? What would have been the fall out from their leader being killed? If the players had a solid enough plan, they may have been able to get help from either the King or the local lord's estate. An attack by griffons in the evening as cover while the party (helped by the kings head of espionage) should be a workable plan. One the religious leader is out of the picture, who's next in charge? Are they also on the holy crusade? If it won't work, how can you make sure the player find this out without wasting a day trying?

Also, just so everyone is actually clear on what you had planned, how big was the town, how many defenders could it actually muster, how big was the attacking force, and what special resources did it have?

From the players perspective how much of the above was known/knowable?

These are not questions I actually have much need to know. As DM, they are questions you should be able to answer quickly. Working through what your players may need and figuring out how you want to give it to them should hopefully aid you immensely in avoiding this issue.

Elxir_Breauer
2016-01-13, 09:44 PM
Honestly, using something along the lines of the Victory Point system from Red Hand of Doom (a 3.5 module for 4-6 level 5+ characters) would be a good idea for this kind of scenario. Set up a laundry list of secondary or even tertiary objectives worth 1 or 2 VP each, and a few major objectives worth 3-4 each, then have the running total kept up on the side. If you really feel like giving them a rough time add in some way to LOSE VP, like if they fail to achieve certain objectives then the enemy not only doesn't get weakened or their side get strengthened, just the opposite happens! I have similar problems with some of the players in my groups occasionally, and giving them a list of things they feel they CAN accomplish at their power level (even if it may be a stretch of resources) gives them more direction, even in a sandbox style game.

Talakeal
2016-01-14, 02:05 AM
Lots of good responses here, and a lot of things to think about. I will respond to individual points this weekend when I have some time and a keyboard, but a couple of general comments:

First, I didnt say I was planning on recreating a "Goonies" themed game, I just mentioned the goonies one time as a guideline for the type of characters the party should be trying to create.

Second, let me ask a questions: how do you introduce a major villain early on in the campaign? One who is meant to be a credible threat and a recurring antagonist, but without being so distant and inactive they become like Orcus on his throne or without making them look so incompetant they become a joke like most 80s saturday morning cartoon villains?

Finally, let me ask how the following scenario would go over: The players are in a city that is under seige by a superior force. They are tasked with delivering a message to a nearby kingdom to beg for them to send their army and break the seige. The players are their kingdoms only hope, and they must slip past the beseiging army and cross the monster infested wilderness to deliver the vital mesage before it is too late.

It is basically the same set up, but with a lot more telegraphing, and the players have about the same amount of impact, but I imagine it would go over a lot better. Why?

goto124
2016-01-14, 02:12 AM
I'll take a guess: it gives the players a simple goal, you set up the situation, the plot is really barebones. The players don't have to do certain things in a specific way, they're presumably free to do anything they like as long as it gets the message to the other side.

Vitruviansquid
2016-01-14, 02:48 AM
I think others have adequately analyzed what went wrong, so I'm going to give a suggestion about how to do this right. Here's how I would've run a scenario like yours:

I would definitely prepare some potential solutions to the raider problem, but none of the solutions I have cooked up are going to perfectly solve the battle by itself. The PC's must do the brunt of the fighting and be the central heroes of the story. For example, if the PCs get the Lich to fight for them, the Lich may tell them that he has been weakened by centuries of imprisonment and will only be able to cast a spell or two from the sidelines. Instead of a bronze dragon, there is something significantly less powerful in the forest, or the bronze dragon may cast a "buffing" magic on the players, or loan them a magic item to help in the fight. Instead of the local lord bringing his full might against the raiders if he can be convinced, he will reluctantly send a small contingent of volunteers who the players have to find a use for. So on and so forth.

All of your prepared solutions will be *safety nets* for yourself to OOC-ly suggest to the players if they don't quickly get to grips with the problem. You should by default prepare to be open-minded about the solutions that your players come up with, and under no circumstances should you allow the players to bum around for even 5 minutes, much less 2 hours, not knowing what to do. All of your prepared solutions are strictly in case your players admit to having no clue what to do.

If a player suggests a stupid idea to you, your default response should be to find a way to allow it, not shut it down. If a player's idea seems stupid to you, subtly change the idea, don't simply shut the player down. For example, if a player wants to ride hunting griffons to fight the bandits, but you REALLY insist on them being too small, you could say "well, you can't ride them, but perhaps you can train them to claw and peck at the raiders, distracting them during your fight."

Also, if the players fail to have the necessary skills to pull off their solutions, like they have no social skills to convince the lord, don't shut them down, but complicate the matter. For example, "the lord says he will not send his soldiers to defend the village, but as he looks over your party, he suddenly gets a gleam in his eye and puts on a wicked grin, 'well, I *could* deign to do something for you enterprising lads and your little hovels, but you'll need to do me a favor first...'" Get out of the habit of seeing the players fail a check and shutting everything down - always think about compromise.

At some point, you need to plan for multiple *combat* encounters in the session, whether they are random beasts encountered in the forest, an advance party from the raiders, or whatever. Whatever version of DnD you are playing, the entire franchise is built around combat. That's what the players are here for, and that's where the meat of the game is. Don't give your players a session without combat.

If the players are arguing over their plans for a long time, STEP IN and resolve it for them. Once the debate over freeing the lich has gone on for a few minutes, you can tell the players they should simply vote on what to do. Nobody wants to drag the game out with long debate over something (anything) happening.

1of3
2016-01-14, 03:20 AM
Honestly, using something along the lines of the Victory Point system from Red Hand of Doom (a 3.5 module for 4-6 level 5+ characters) would be a good idea for this kind of scenario.

I agree. The PCs did something. They rallied the villagers, they set traps. How should they know, that wouldn't be enough? GM can tell them of course, but then it feels wasted. It should count for something, right? If fortifying the village is some points for the tally, that is much better already.


To do this, players need some information.

a) A rough idea, what there is to gain. Let's say:


We assume all villagers die. For every token, gain 1d2. On a success, 10% survive.

b) Some ways to get tokens. In this situation, I suggest one definite end point, so something like:



Gain tokens for:

- Recruiting men (depending on number)
- Recruiting wizards or monsters (depending on power)
- Assassinating or undermining their leadership (depending on how many key figures)
- Other useful things
- Choose the number of foes to engage in showdown battle: Moderate, Hard, Epic enemies facing your PCs. Gain 2, 4 or 8 tokens respectively, no matter the fate of the PCs.
You can leave the area at any time before the showdown.

The scenario should include some obvious points. That was alright. Coralling the villagers is an obvious thing to do. And they did.
Some items might offer bonus points for good rolls. Like recruiting, giving an extra point on a high Charisma check.

Put those information on a hand out. That is very important. Even the player who wouldn't want to recruit NPCs will probably suck it up, if it's black on white that this is an expected thing to do. Especially because, he knows there will be heroic fighting at the end.

With such a system, you can be very generous and improvise easily. Like, a player wants to pray to the gods. - That sounds like a useful thing to do. Answer: "No problem, the village has one prayer at the local shrine. Someone make a Religion check. Get 1 save-the-village token for every ten points on the roll." And react to other suggestions in that manner.

NichG
2016-01-14, 03:48 AM
Second, let me ask a questions: how do you introduce a major villain early on in the campaign? One who is meant to be a credible threat and a recurring antagonist, but without being so distant and inactive they become like Orcus on his throne or without making them look so incompetant they become a joke like most 80s saturday morning cartoon villains?

You don't. Almost the only way for a villain to be stable is to be hidden. Think of it this way - there's a limited bandwidth of information about the world from you to the players. Anything that is on-screen is sharing a very limited shelf space with other things. When there's a problem, the mental process of the players will be to take whatever is on the shelf (that is, whatever the handful of things they know about the world are) one by one and ask 'does this thing solve it?'. If the major villain is on the shelf, then they'll say 'ah, the solution is to kill this guy'. And then will either succeed or fail horribly, within one or at most two sessions of when that actor entered the scene.

The issue with recruiting NPC help isn't just 'we want to be the heroes' although there's an element of that. It also has to do with this immediacy and limited bandwidth factor. If there's an immediate threat and I have a time limit, the last thing I'm going to do is to set out in random directions and try to explore on the off chance that I might find powerful allies. I don't know that there will be such allies, nor do I know that they'll be sufficient - that's all stuff that you might have planned, but given the limited bandwidth the players are going to at best have a few adventure hooks about those forces. When you place an immediate threat in front of players, that's communicating to them 'stop mucking around and exploring and deal with this', but you had conceived that the only way to resolve the immediate threat was in fact to go mucking around with exploring - following up on seemingly random leads in the hope that it would resolve this apparently unrelated problem.

Now, if you had run this scenario such that the players had already made alliances or at least tentative friendships with these various forces in the region, and only then had presented the army, in that case the players might think 'oh, I can make use of this ally I made previously'. It makes more logical sense: 'I collected a resource during my explorations (an ally), now that things are getting serious it's time to expend that resource (calling in aid)'. Even though its an NPC doing things, that can still feel a little bit like the players are actually making use of 'their' resources, if those alliances were made previously and independently of this current threat. But if you flip it around, it doesn't make sense anymore - why would anyone investigate a local lord's drunk behavior or a haunted tower when the invaders are at the gate?

HammeredWharf
2016-01-14, 05:01 AM
Second, let me ask a questions: how do you introduce a major villain early on in the campaign? One who is meant to be a credible threat and a recurring antagonist, but without being so distant and inactive they become like Orcus on his throne or without making them look so incompetant they become a joke like most 80s saturday morning cartoon villains?

Here I'll disagree with NichG and claim that you can do it well with enough creativity. However, what you don't do is have that villain attack the PCs directly. In your scenario, the leader of those invaders could've come to the village, trying to intimidate them into surrendering. He could kick the PCs around a bit if they decided to attack him. Of course, if PCs got really lucky and/or creative, they could murder him there and then, but that's cool. Villains are replaceable and killing a big bad early is memorable. Anyway, after the visit he could leave things to his lieutenant, because the big bad has better things to do than siege an unimportant village.

That's an easy way. However, there are other options. You could have a dragon attack the village and the big bad would come to its aid and occupy the village in the process. You could have the big bad attack the capital and cut off the village's access to help that way.

The important part is giving the PCs a formidable, but manageable opponent to fight, because NPCs shouldn't solo the adventure. In my examples, that opponent could've been the lieutenant or the dragon's minions.


Finally, let me ask how the following scenario would go over: The players are in a city that is under seige by a superior force. They are tasked with delivering a message to a nearby kingdom to beg for them to send their army and break the seige. The players are their kingdoms only hope, and they must slip past the beseiging army and cross the monster infested wilderness to deliver the vital mesage before it is too late.

It is basically the same set up, but with a lot more telegraphing, and the players have about the same amount of impact, but I imagine it would go over a lot better. Why?

Unless the players would have to go beg a nearby lich for help to have any chance of success, it's not the same setup.

Who goes to a lich for help, anyway? Or to a cursed grove? A copper dragon I can understand, but the other options sounds like they'd result in something as bad as getting conquered by an army of savages. At this point, if I were a player in your game and nothing seemed to work, I'd do as the lord said and abandon the village.

Mystral
2016-01-14, 05:39 AM
Aren't you the guy with that horrible campaign and DM?

neonchameleon
2016-01-14, 06:09 AM
First, I didnt say I was planning on recreating a "Goonies" themed game, I just mentioned the goonies one time as a guideline for the type of characters the party should be trying to create.

Which implies that they are set in the same sort of universe. Asking for Goonies characters and dropping them into Aliens is a bait and switch - characters reflect their environment. And unless you are a lot more skilled than you are don't run a bait and switch campaign. (And even then there are only a couple of times it works).


Second, let me ask a questions: how do you introduce a major villain early on in the campaign? One who is meant to be a credible threat and a recurring antagonist, but without being so distant and inactive they become like Orcus on his throne or without making them look so incompetant they become a joke like most 80s saturday morning cartoon villains?

By not having them confront the PCs directly. The minions whose wiles the PCs thwart mention the villain's alias/name and are quite clearly more scared of the major villain than they are of the PCs even when the PC has them at swordpoint.


Finally, let me ask how the following scenario would go over: The players are in a city that is under seige by a superior force. They are tasked with delivering a message to a nearby kingdom to beg for them to send their army and break the seige. The players are their kingdoms only hope, and they must slip past the beseiging army and cross the monster infested wilderness to deliver the vital mesage before it is too late.

It is basically the same set up, but with a lot more telegraphing, and the players have about the same amount of impact, but I imagine it would go over a lot better. Why?

It's the same setup to the extent that Rambo and Predator are the same setup. Uber-powerful guy wanders into an environment full of armed enemies and blows them away.

First the PCs are not automatically less awesome than the DMPC. "We need help from an army" isn't remotely the same as "We need help from Uber 733t kewl DMPC who is going to show us what but one person can actually do".

Second, there's a huge difference between framing the story and uncovering during the story. The old man in the tavern in the opening scene saying "You need the Sword of McGuffin to fight the Evil One" is very different from a random urchin half way through the adventure saying "You're going to fight the Evil One without the Sword of McGuffin? Well aren't you stupid. You've just wasted all this time." And what you were doing was the random urchin nonsense.

Third, what the PCs do matters relative to their goals. You (and the problem normally sits in the DM's chair) left them with the impression that they had the army to deal with. And they couldn't. They failed.

Fourth, you aren't going to no-sell the PCs plans in the same way. You're unlikely to have to say "No, you can't just flap your arms to fly" - people don't try that. But things like dodging or fighting patrols? The PCs can do however they like (and remember to make a dodged patrol worth as much XP as a fought one). Whether they borrow/steal horses or continue on foot? Etc.

GloatingSwine
2016-01-14, 07:23 AM
Second, let me ask a questions: how do you introduce a major villain early on in the campaign? One who is meant to be a credible threat and a recurring antagonist, but without being so distant and inactive they become like Orcus on his throne or without making them look so incompetant they become a joke like most 80s saturday morning cartoon villains?

Make him inaccessable personally, but still make it feel like when the players win they thwarted him.

An example could be:

At early levels the players hear of an evil cult trying to summon a demon into the world via unspeakable rituals, since stopping this is a good way to pick up renown (and chicks/dudes) they swoop in and stop it. As they do so they hear a departing voice swearing vengeance and a vile presence departing to the north/east/wherever, a fragment of the demon's essence made it through, surely this will be trouble down the line!

After a few adventures they start hearing about a bad dude, bad enough to rescue the president, who seems to be behind some of the things they've been putting a stop to. As they get closer they find they're facing a Blackguard, turns out the demon's soul found a mortal champion/vessel and is stirring up trouble. They defeat him and the demon is truly banished, hooray!.

When they're higher level they get a nasty surprise, the demon found another way to the prime material, and he has it in for them. But now they're a high level adventuring party who can give the demon the whuppin' his daddy never did.

At every stage they get to own their victories* but there's a clear thread of who is causing all the trouble and a clear sense of level appropriate escalation.


In your campaign you already sowed the seeds that could have led to the players winning in the way they were trying, you let slip that the evil doom army wasn't at full strength and that's why it was picking on farming villages. You could have let them mount their defence, give them a few resources (the griffons, even if they can't control them they're still dangerous, ornery, and hungry so they'll do some damage if released at the right time, some of the Lord's knights breaking rank to support them) and let them hold long enough that the doom army retreats and goes to find some softer villages that plucky young adventurers haven't just spawned in.

That means that the threat is unsolved, but it has departed for now and the players can be sent off to warn the lord's liege that this is happening and that the lord isn't living up to his feudal contract and needs a word in his shell-like. Leaving their village for adventure but also to rally forces because the evil doom army will grow over time.

They can then intermittently face lieutenants of the big bad or raiding parties of his army (without the resources now so their own growing power shows out more) who are stirring up trouble before they're high enough level to actually deal with a big doom army and its big boss.


* Always try and figure out ways for players to own their victories, this is the real downside with the "press here to win campaign" type solutions. The players don't own the victory because it doesn't come from any property of their characters. Their characters are their projections into the campaign, so success or failure should come out of the capabilities and properties of those characters, that makes the players feel like they own the victory.

Comet
2016-01-14, 07:28 AM
This is why I just design areas and NPCs and let the players figure out how to make an interesting story out of it. Trying to nail it down to a story, or even multiple potential stories, before the game starts is just too much stress for me. I much prefer a chaotic, sprawling mess of sequential events that might or might not form a cohesive whole to a pre-defined, carefully thought out story arc that might or might not interest the players.

Jay R
2016-01-14, 09:17 AM
Second, let me ask a questions: how do you introduce a major villain early on in the campaign? One who is meant to be a credible threat and a recurring antagonist, but without being so distant and inactive they become like Orcus on his throne or without making them look so incompetant they become a joke like most 80s saturday morning cartoon villains?

First they face goblins wearing his livery. As the goblins die, they tell the PCs that Black Lord B'beg will avenge them.

They will not directly face the Black Lord for many levels, but they will face ever more powerful minions. It will be awhile before the Black Lord puts together that the various minor setbacks his lowest level minions have had are caused by the same group of adventurers.

Look at Thanos in the Marvel movies. He's been being introduced over several movies, but no Avenger or hero has directly faced him yet.

Or look at Richelieu in a Musketeers movie (except the 2011 Steampunk version). D'Artagnan faces Rochefort in an opening scene, but is beaten by three peasants. Then he and the three musketeers face 5-6 Cardinal's Guards. On the road to London, dozens have set traps for them. Later, they are under attack from a besieged city when they hold the bastion at La Rochelle alone.

They never face all of Richelieu's power, though, because they are mere annoyances, and Richelieu is really focused on England and Spain.

Fianlly, consider the Lord of the Rings. The hobbits run from wraiths, and have to get away from them and escape to Rivendell. Over time, the Fellowship faces goblins and a troll, is chased away by a balrog, attacked by orcs, etc. The ones who stay in Gondor, Rohan, and Fangorn face ever-larger armies, while Frodo and Sam have to slip by orcs, fight a spider, face treachery from Gollum, escape from orcs, and endure the travails of Mordor. They never directly face Sauron, but he's always there.


Finally, let me ask how the following scenario would go over: The players are in a city that is under seige by a superior force. They are tasked with delivering a message to a nearby kingdom to beg for them to send their army and break the seige. The players are their kingdoms only hope, and they must slip past the beseiging army and cross the monster infested wilderness to deliver the vital mesage before it is too late.

It is basically the same set up, but with a lot more telegraphing, and the players have about the same amount of impact, but I imagine it would go over a lot better. Why?

Because their assigned mission (delivering a message) is something that they can accomplish. In this scenario, the job is to slip past the army they cannot defeat. All of the sneaking, taking out sentries, running away, hiding, etc. will be things the PCs are doing. Delivering the message is the climax of the adventure, and carries the triumph of a job well done. You'd tell them about the battle, with the reinforcements winning because of the message, but it would be part of the wrap-up, not the adventure.

Suppose your PCs had known that their mission had been to awaken a Lich to save the town, and they tried to do so, and after many travails and encounters, they successfully awakened a Lich to save the town. In that case, awakening him is the climax, showing that they have triumphed. The Lich's defense of the town is a result of their success.

But their mission wasn't to wake up a lich. It was to defend the town, and they expected the actual fight at the town to be the big climax. They tried everything they could do to accomplish that mission, and it all failed. Then they were told that if they go back to the castle and push the right button, somebody else would accomplish their mission while they watched. Awakening the lich is the proof that they could never have succeeded at their mission.

This might have the same final result, but
a. They would have actually, with their own efforts, accomplished what they tried to accomplish,
b. the bulk of their time and energy wouldn't have been focused on trying things they are later told couldn't have worked, and
c. The climax of the adventure is their success at competing the mission, not watching somebody else complete the mission.

OldTrees1
2016-01-14, 09:35 AM
Second, let me ask a questions: how do you introduce a major villain early on in the campaign? One who is meant to be a credible threat and a recurring antagonist, but without being so distant and inactive they become like Orcus on his throne or without making them look so incompetant they become a joke like most 80s saturday morning cartoon villains?

I have introduced the major potential antagonists by:
1) They run the organization that wronged you. This is an indirect introduction since the players learn about the villain through the villain's choices in organization motivations/means/ends. (so this would be the distant and inactive kind)
Example: Dictators who assigned the prison work camp you are prisoner in to work for their pet project. Knowing my players if their first goal is to escape being wronged, a later goal will be to get back at the one that wronged them.

2) They run into the villain as they were peacefully leaving the scene of some of their villainy. Their goal has already been achieved and they are suitably entrenched that they can calmly exit regardless of what the PCs attempt to do.
Example: The PCs come across a town near the end of a massacre. With the targets of the massacre slain, the villain is calmly walking up the ramp into their personal airship (perhaps wiping their blade if the PCs have good spot checks). The PCs see an overwhelming force and decide to wait until the villain leaves, to try to rescue anyone still alive, or charge the villain. However charging the villain is going to be hard considering the distance involved and the villain leaving the scene (say 200ft and the airship takes off in 2 turns).

3) They run into the potentially future antagonist before the antagonist conflict is realized.
Example: In one of my sandbox campaigns the PCs met a potential antagonist by buying Healing Belts and other items from their store. Although, being a sandbox, that happened not to develop into an antagonist.


Finally, let me ask how the following scenario would go over: The players are in a city that is under seige by a superior force. They are tasked with delivering a message to a nearby kingdom to beg for them to send their army and break the seige. The players are their kingdoms only hope, and they must slip past the beseiging army and cross the monster infested wilderness to deliver the vital mesage before it is too late.

It is basically the same set up, but with a lot more telegraphing, and the players have about the same amount of impact, but I imagine it would go over a lot better. Why?

Eh, depending on your players that might be seen as a railroad (since at the strategic level you are deciding the intro, ends, & means) or it might be fine (since at the tactical level you are deciding the intro & ends but not the means).

However you would need to give the players meaningful choices about their path past the army/wilderness. This means there need to be multiple options for each stage, those options need to have different impact, and the differences between the options needs to be visible to the players. If the wilderness is all homogenous (or has only non relevant differences) then no choice of path through it would be a meaningful choice. Likewise if the wilderness is not homogenous but the players/PCs can't see any relevant differences, then there is no meaningful choice.

John Longarrow
2016-01-14, 10:02 AM
Second, let me ask a questions: how do you introduce a major villain early on in the campaign? One who is meant to be a credible threat and a recurring antagonist, but without being so distant and inactive they become like Orcus on his throne or without making them look so incompetant they become a joke like most 80s saturday morning cartoon villains?

There are many ways to do this, depending on the relationship between party/antagonist.

If the party can't go against the antagonist.
Example: Duke is old. Duke has decided his son will succeed him. Duke's daughter wants to discredit her brother so HER husband will rule (i.e. she will rule through him). PCs are brought in by the son's mentor to help. Starting day 1 PCs know the sister is behind a bunch of crap but they can't do anything to he directly. They just have to keep her plans from making their boss look bad.

If the party is to weak to directly engage the antagonist.
Classic literary example: Party needs to help XYZ escape the claws of the BBEG. Party provides leads XYZ through the maze/swamp/what ever, taking out BBEGs troops in the way and gets them to safety. After they have amassed power themselves the party can face the BBEG.

The biggest trick is to set the stage in such a way that the party knows they can't go after BBEG at the moment. Give them lots of ways to stick it to BBEG though.

Airk
2016-01-14, 11:00 AM
This has been a surprisingly insightful thread. ;)

To add some extra advice to how you can introduce a villain - yes, you totally need to do it "off screen"; Or at least, at a safe distance. Which is a really long way if you're playing D&D at any level above maybe 3rd. So really, you want the PCs to get wind of things secondhand, using a combination of methods, some of which follow:


This one has already been mentioned, but having a seemingly "random" minion, generally one that is already defeated or on the verge of defeat say something like "This doesn't matter! Lord Karn already has what he needs!".
Once the PCs have an idea of what Lord Karn LOOKS like, or even MIGHT look like, they can start hearing about him from witnesses. He doesn't have to do anything super nefarious - just a simple "So I saw a big bunch of goblins coming down the hill, so obviously, I hid. But as they were passing by, I saw..." is sufficient to let the PCs know that whoever this noteworthy person is, he's up to no good.
The PCs can encounter things the villain has already done; If they're travelling, they can come to a ravaged village. Or find a patrol of dead soldiers (with, y'know, one that's only mortally wounded.) etc. DON'T do this with things the PCs are attached to, or things that the PCs should have been able to stop. But no one is going to be upset at finding out the Bad Guy is doing Bad Things in places where the PCs aren't.



There are probably some other tricks too, but that should give you the gist - the PCs need to get the idea that this guy is up to no good, possibly even trying to interfere with them, but that he's doing it at arm's reach.

GloatingSwine
2016-01-14, 12:02 PM
The golden rule that comes out of everything there is don't let the players meet the big bad until you're ready to have him die.

Even if you don't actually want him to die then, be prepared for it to happen (eg. his plot rolls on without him, he's a martyr to his cause now, his ambitious underling was planning to do this anyway, whatever.)

Talakeal
2016-01-14, 12:30 PM
Which implies that they are set in the same sort of universe. Asking for Goonies characters and dropping them into Aliens is a bait and switch - characters reflect their environment. And unless you are a lot more skilled than you are don't run a bait and switch campaign. (And even then there are only a couple of times it works).



By not having them confront the PCs directly. The minions whose wiles the PCs thwart mention the villain's alias/name and are quite clearly more scared of the major villain than they are of the PCs even when the PC has them at swordpoint.



It's the same setup to the extent that Rambo and Predator are the same setup. Uber-powerful guy wanders into an environment full of armed enemies and blows them away.

First the PCs are not automatically less awesome than the DMPC. "We need help from an army" isn't remotely the same as "We need help from Uber 733t kewl DMPC who is going to show us what but one person can actually do".

Second, there's a huge difference between framing the story and uncovering during the story. The old man in the tavern in the opening scene saying "You need the Sword of McGuffin to fight the Evil One" is very different from a random urchin half way through the adventure saying "You're going to fight the Evil One without the Sword of McGuffin? Well aren't you stupid. You've just wasted all this time." And what you were doing was the random urchin nonsense.

Third, what the PCs do matters relative to their goals. You (and the problem normally sits in the DM's chair) left them with the impression that they had the army to deal with. And they couldn't. They failed.

Fourth, you aren't going to no-sell the PCs plans in the same way. You're unlikely to have to say "No, you can't just flap your arms to fly" - people don't try that. But things like dodging or fighting patrols? The PCs can do however they like (and remember to make a dodged patrol worth as much XP as a fought one). Whether they borrow/steal horses or continue on foot? Etc.

Hold on a second; giving one sentance about the type of PCs someone should make is the same as telling the players the style of the campaign? So if I said something like "all the players are step siblings in a big family kind of like the brady bunch" you would expect that the DM is trying to run a game in the style of a seventies sitcom?

Also, where are you getting DMPC? The lich had no personality, no goals, no real history, no stats, and only had a name at the last minute because I needed something to right on his tomb. He had less than five minutes lf screen time during which he cast a spell and said maybe ten sentances of dialogue before getting killed. Is that really your definition of a DMPC?

The only reason he was there was to help the players control the ghost army because they lacked the means to easilly do it themselves.

This was a battle of armies, no one person or small group of persons could have swung the tide, not the PCs, not the lich, not the vaillain, not any hypothetical self insert or former PC I have ever ran. It is an army of thousands of individuals in an e6 world.

The players spent the first fifteen minutes of the session thinking they could actually fight off the army without an army of their own, and I guess I humored them precisely the wrong amount before letting them know IC and OOC that it wasnt feasable. Depending on who I talk to I either should have shut them down immediately or let them miraculously succeed.


First they face goblins wearing his livery. As the goblins die, they tell the PCs that Black Lord B'beg will avenge them.

They will not directly face the Black Lord for many levels, but they will face ever more powerful minions. It will be awhile before the Black Lord puts together that the various minor setbacks his lowest level minions have had are caused by the same group of adventurers.

Look at Thanos in the Marvel movies. He's been being introduced over several movies, but no Avenger or hero has directly faced him yet.

Or look at Richelieu in a Musketeers movie (except the 2011 Steampunk version). D'Artagnan faces Rochefort in an opening scene, but is beaten by three peasants. Then he and the three musketeers face 5-6 Cardinal's Guards. On the road to London, dozens have set traps for them. Later, they are under attack from a besieged city when they hold the bastion at La Rochelle alone.

They never face all of Richelieu's power, though, because they are mere annoyances, and Richelieu is really focused on England and Spain.

Fianlly, consider the Lord of the Rings. The hobbits run from wraiths, and have to get away from them and escape to Rivendell. Over time, the Fellowship faces goblins and a troll, is chased away by a balrog, attacked by orcs, etc. The ones who stay in Gondor, Rohan, and Fangorn face ever-larger armies, while Frodo and Sam have to slip by orcs, fight a spider, face treachery from Gollum, escape from orcs, and endure the travails of Mordor. They never directly face Sauron, but he's always there.



Because their assigned mission (delivering a message) is something that they can accomplish. In this scenario, the job is to slip past the army they cannot defeat. All of the sneaking, taking out sentries, running away, hiding, etc. will be things the PCs are doing. Delivering the message is the climax of the adventure, and carries the triumph of a job well done. You'd tell them about the battle, with the reinforcements winning because of the message, but it would be part of the wrap-up, not the adventure.

Suppose your PCs had known that their mission had been to awaken a Lich to save the town, and they tried to do so, and after many travails and encounters, they successfully awakened a Lich to save the town. In that case, awakening him is the climax, showing that they have triumphed. The Lich's defense of the town is a result of their success.

But their mission wasn't to wake up a lich. It was to defend the town, and they expected the actual fight at the town to be the big climax. They tried everything they could do to accomplish that mission, and it all failed. Then they were told that if they go back to the castle and push the right button, somebody else would accomplish their mission while they watched. Awakening the lich is the proof that they could never have succeeded at their mission.

This might have the same final result, but
a. They would have actually, with their own efforts, accomplished what they tried to accomplish,
b. the bulk of their time and energy wouldn't have been focused on trying things they are later told couldn't have worked, and
c. The climax of the adventure is their success at competing the mission, not watching somebody else complete the mission.

Two comments if I may:

First, I dont think one should use LoTR as an example, as it is just about the worst example of PCs not feeling big enough. Almost every major battle is won by waiting for reinforcements to solve the problem for you, be it DMPC gamdalf. The eagles, the rohirrim, the ents, or a literal army of the dead. Heck, the Hobbits almost never win battles, they usually convey information (bilbo telling bard about smaugs weakness), talk someone else into fighting (merry and pippen to tree beard), or an occasional burglary or backstab. The whole quest is solved by using a magic macguffin to beat an unstoppable villain.

If I ran an adventure like Lord of the Rings I imagine all the problems I had here would ve magnified ten fold.


Second, no the players mission wasnt to defend the town, because that was impossible. Their mission was to find help. There was apparently a miscommunication and they spent the first fifteen minutes or so thinking that was their mission before I realized it and corrected them, and apparently it was the correction that pissed one of the players off.

Airk
2016-01-14, 12:42 PM
Hold on a second; giving one sentance about the type of PCs someone should make is the same as telling the players the style of the campaign? So if I said something like "all the players are step siblings in a big family kind of like the brady bunch" you would expect that the DM is trying to run a game in the style of a seventies sitcom?

No, but when you set the bar at "Build kinda goofy characters that aren't really good at fighting" -- which is what _I_ take from "Goonies like characters" -- you'd better be prepared to present a game where such characters are useful. I see no signs of quirky, goofy characters with limited combat skills being a useful choice for this game.

Segev
2016-01-14, 12:45 PM
One approach which can work is to assume that the players might see something you don't. They might have a power or ability you hadn't thought of, or a clever thought that will make what initially sounds cockamamie to you into a brilliant (if desperate) maneuver. With that in mind, when the players come up with what seems like an unworkable plan to you, don't tell them that it can't work. Take the time to get into it with them; ask them what they're going to do, and then describe what they can see and should know in great detail. Make sure you're all on the same page. Ask them, at every turn, what they will accomplish and how they'll do it.

Be on their side, looking at their powers and abilities and suggesting how to use them to help. If there's something that could help them that they don't know about or might've forgotten, remind them. The GM I play Rifts with often goes too far on this route for my taste, almost planning things on some players' behalf, but she can be pulled back and ultimately leaves it up to us.

Remember to look at EVERYTHING they've done or have thought to do, and see if it might change the NPCs' plans. Honestly, getting the rallied villagers to work with the hunting griffons to mount a defense with the barricaded and trapped town sounds like something that could really demoralize the BBEG's troops. Perhaps he cannot afford a Pyrrhic victory here. He, himself, said that he's following his god's decree, but that he has to pick his battles. The PCs should, perhaps, be able to make him pick a different one.

The PCs rallied the village; how? What convinced the villagers they could stay and win? When the PCs were pretty sure they couldn't, why were the villagers not, themselves, deciding to take the BBEG up on his offer of time to retreat? The PCs now have to deal with townsfolk who don't think they can win. This implicitly changes the PCs' win condition, as well.

When the PCs decide to fight the good fight, and are willing to die...don't tell them, "You realize that will just end the campaign." There's no reason for it to do so, unless the PCs actually die in the fighting. You can even let them win their part of the battle if the enemies just keep coming and eventually force a surrender.

The BBEG is oddly magnanimous for a raider, so far as you've told us about him: he gives time to retreat, he allows people who've raided and sabotaged his camp to go and consider whether to join him... why not have him be a relatively decent ruler who actually wants to make the town into his base of operations? Surrendered townsfolk are now made into serfs for HIS land. It's not...ideal...and it may be oppressive, but it's not death and utter destitution. Just...stressful and frightening.


Going another way, the PCs had fortified the town, had sabotaged the enemy, and potentially could bring some small hunting-beasts to bear. Why can't this shift the odds? Rather than saying, "This can't work," why not really examine it and let them set up their defenses? Let them know what strengths the enemy still has (at least that the PCs can see), and let the PCs decide for themselves whether that's acceptable, or if they need to do something more about it?

Treating the enemy encampment like a dungeon crawl with specific objectives could greatly weaken the attacking force, potentially.


In essence, you need to not so much "let anything they say work," so much as you need to lay out the problems that face any particular possible path, and then work WITH the players to see if they can come up with a way to ameliorate them, or judge if they can take them head-on.

This approach means you MUST know what your NPCs' capabilities are, and NOT change them. Otherwise, it's too tempting to say "well, they'd have thought of the PCs doing that, so they'd also have THIS capability to counter it..."

But the key is to let the players work out their approach. And then to let them try it. Don't give them "you will die" information; give them factual information and let them gauge whether or not they can take it. If they think it's too much, then let them work on ways to break up the problem and reduce the gap in power incrementally.

Give the situation; don't give whether or not the solution is pre-ordained to succeed or fail. Work with them to alter their solutions until they can resolve the challenges that would potentially get in the way of having a CHANCE to succeed.

Segev
2016-01-14, 12:53 PM
Second, no the players mission wasnt to defend the town, because that was impossible. Their mission was to find help. There was apparently a miscommunication and they spent the first fifteen minutes or so thinking that was their mission before I realized it and corrected them, and apparently it was the correction that pissed one of the players off.

The way to handle this is to have somebody who can assign a mission, then. Have that drunk town leader actually regret his bargain and curse his own cowardice, but perhaps say, "I can't do anything. I certainly can't tell you to go get help, because that's the only way this town will survive." He's a politician, after all, so word lawyering is...possible. Make him not totally useless. (After all, what's the town leader going to do to help if they DO persuade him?)

Or have the village sheriff make the same observation, and tell the PCs they're the only ones who could do it safely. If you know the King's a dead end, have that time-wasting cut off by saying "we're already sending some men to guard the women and children; they'll go to the King." Or, if you don't... make sure to let visiting the King, even to find out he won't help, be useful. I, personally, know that I'd have taken him up on it, especially knowing the Orcs' plan is to cause a famine. I'd ride out to the next villages and the next, warning them to take an early harvest and retreat to the king's castle post haste. Thwart the orcs' famine plans and make it the King's problem while still providing enough food to withstand a siege.

But that's just how I would have responded. Again, don't force the PCs to go any one way. Work with what they suggest. Not "make it work," but help THEM make it work by providing the problem, pointing out what they know, and helping them modify their plans or combine their plans until they have something to work.


Again, if the mission as you see it is "go get help," then somebody needs to be in a position to tell them that that's their job. "I'll fortify the town and organize the defenses; you go find help. We'll only be able to hold out for so long!" That shifts the game entirely. It would probably satisfy most of your players, because "here is your quest" is not railroading nearly so much as "here is what you think your quest is; the rails say the only way to do it is by this other quest that gets somebody else to solve what you think your quest is for you."

GloatingSwine
2016-01-14, 12:58 PM
Also, where are you getting DMPC? The lich had no personality, no goals, no real history, no stats, and only had a name at the last minute because I needed something to right on his tomb. He had less than five minutes lf screen time during which he cast a spell and said maybe ten sentances of dialogue before getting killed. Is that really your definition of a DMPC?

That might not have been the best choice of words (I called it the win the campaign machine), but it kinda did the same thing. The PCs turned it on and then what they'd been told was the problem they needed to solve (doom army) got solved without their further input.


This was a battle of armies, no one person or small group of persons could have swung the tide, not the PCs, not the lich, not the vaillain, not any hypothetical self insert or former PC I have ever ran. It is an army of thousands of individuals in an e6 world.

The players spent the first fifteen minutes of the session thinking they could actually fight off the army without an army of their own, and I guess I humored them precisely the wrong amount before letting them know IC and OOC that it wasnt feasable. Depending on who I talk to I either should have shut them down immediately or let them miraculously succeed.

Sounds like that wasn't the sort of campaign they wanted to play. They wanted to play a campaign where their characters mattered, and they obviously believed that that was the kind of campaign because all their actions pointed to that.

Talakeal
2016-01-14, 01:02 PM
The golden rule that comes out of everything there is don't let the players meet the big bad until you're ready to have him die.

Even if you don't actually want him to die then, be prepared for it to happen (eg. his plot rolls on without him, he's a martyr to his cause now, his ambitious underling was planning to do this anyway, whatever.)

No, he can die at any point. The real "masterminds" are gods, so if the villain somehow died in the first session it wouldnt hurt the campaign in the long run, just change the details.


One approach which can work is to assume that the players might see something you don't. They might have a power or ability you hadn't thought of, or a clever thought that will make what initially sounds cockamamie to you into a brilliant (if desperate) maneuver. With that in mind, when the players come up with what seems like an unworkable plan to you, don't tell them that it can't work. Take the time to get into it with them; ask them what they're going to do, and then describe what they can see and should know in great detail. Make sure you're all on the same page. Ask them, at every turn, what they will accomplish and how they'll do it.

Be on their side, looking at their powers and abilities and suggesting how to use them to help. If there's something that could help them that they don't know about or might've forgotten, remind them. The GM I play Rifts with often goes too far on this route for my taste, almost planning things on some players' behalf, but she can be pulled back and ultimately leaves it up to us.

Remember to look at EVERYTHING they've done or have thought to do, and see if it might change the NPCs' plans. Honestly, getting the rallied villagers to work with the hunting griffons to mount a defense with the barricaded and trapped town sounds like something that could really demoralize the BBEG's troops. Perhaps he cannot afford a Pyrrhic victory here. He, himself, said that he's following his god's decree, but that he has to pick his battles. The PCs should, perhaps, be able to make him pick a different one.

The PCs rallied the village; how? What convinced the villagers they could stay and win? When the PCs were pretty sure they couldn't, why were the villagers not, themselves, deciding to take the BBEG up on his offer of time to retreat? The PCs now have to deal with townsfolk who don't think they can win. This implicitly changes the PCs' win condition, as well.

When the PCs decide to fight the good fight, and are willing to die...don't tell them, "You realize that will just end the campaign." There's no reason for it to do so, unless the PCs actually die in the fighting. You can even let them win their part of the battle if the enemies just keep coming and eventually force a surrender.

The BBEG is oddly magnanimous for a raider, so far as you've told us about him: he gives time to retreat, he allows people who've raided and sabotaged his camp to go and consider whether to join him... why not have him be a relatively decent ruler who actually wants to make the town into his base of operations? Surrendered townsfolk are now made into serfs for HIS land. It's not...ideal...and it may be oppressive, but it's not death and utter destitution. Just...stressful and frightening.


Going another way, the PCs had fortified the town, had sabotaged the enemy, and potentially could bring some small hunting-beasts to bear. Why can't this shift the odds? Rather than saying, "This can't work," why not really examine it and let them set up their defenses? Let them know what strengths the enemy still has (at least that the PCs can see), and let the PCs decide for themselves whether that's acceptable, or if they need to do something more about it?

Treating the enemy encampment like a dungeon crawl with specific objectives could greatly weaken the attacking force, potentially.


In essence, you need to not so much "let anything they say work," so much as you need to lay out the problems that face any particular possible path, and then work WITH the players to see if they can come up with a way to ameliorate them, or judge if they can take them head-on.

This approach means you MUST know what your NPCs' capabilities are, and NOT change them. Otherwise, it's too tempting to say "well, they'd have thought of the PCs doing that, so they'd also have THIS capability to counter it..."

But the key is to let the players work out their approach. And then to let them try it. Don't give them "you will die" information; give them factual information and let them gauge whether or not they can take it. If they think it's too much, then let them work on ways to break up the problem and reduce the gap in power incrementally.

Give the situation; don't give whether or not the solution is pre-ordained to succeed or fail. Work with them to alter their solutions until they can resolve the challenges that would potentially get in the way of having a CHANCE to succeed.

This is almost exactly what I thought I was doing.


Also, the BBEG doesnt care about the people. His only goal is to cause a famine to cull humanity as a whole, and a couple dozen village families are beneath his notice one way or another, however one of his allies does care about saving lives and has told him that he must give the people time to escape first.


No, but when you set the bar at "Build kinda goofy characters that aren't really good at fighting" -- which is what _I_ take from "Goonies like characters" -- you'd better be prepared to present a game where such characters are useful. I see no signs of quirky, goofy characters with limited combat skills being a useful choice for this game.

Yep, pretty much. Their mission was to take risks and explore ancient ruins to find a macguffin that would save their town because they lacked the direct combat or leadership skills to do so.

When their town needed money the Goonies didn't try getting summer jobs to pay off the debt, they went on an adventure looking for pirate treasure to save the dya, and that is exactly the sort of thing this mission called for.


That might not have been the best choice of words (I called it the win the campaign machine), but it kinda did the same thing. The PCs turned it on and then what they'd been told was the problem they needed to solve (doom army) got solved without their further input.

Sounds like that wasn't the sort of campaign they wanted to play. They wanted to play a campaign where their characters mattered, and they obviously believed that that was the kind of campaign because all their actions pointed to that.

It was one adventure, hardly the whole campaign. The first session went fine, and I have no plans for future adventures to be similar, especially after what happened.

And again, I am still mot sure why being the ones who discovered the haunted castle and then had the idea to use it to save their town meant that their actions didn't matter.

GloatingSwine
2016-01-14, 01:31 PM
And again, I am still mot sure why being the ones who discovered the haunted castle and then had the idea to use it to save their town meant that their actions didnt matter.

Because it doesn't come from any property of their characters. It was just a thing that was there. Any schmuck could have gone and pressed the button.

They may also not have considered it (and spent ages arguing about it) because a Lich basically by default has bad news written all over it and they didn't see any outcome where releasing it made the problem anything but worse.

And they didn't have the opportunity to "use" it to save their town, they turned it on and watched.


When their town needed money the Goonies didnt try getting summer jobs to pay off the debt, they went on an adventure looking for pirate treasure to save the dya, and that is exactly the sort of thing this mission called for.

Yeah, but they have to fight for it and they win, through a combination of guile and charisma (keeping some gems seperate and befriending Sloth who only actually helps them get away whilst karma does for the villains). Not by pressing the "unleash Sloth" button and watching from a safe distance.

John Longarrow
2016-01-14, 01:57 PM
This was a battle of armies, no one person or small group of persons could have swung the tide, not the PCs, not the lich, not the vaillain, not any hypothetical self insert or former PC I have ever ran. It is an army of thousands of individuals in an e6 world.

I believe I see some of where your players frustration comes from. I do not think you have been clear to them, or us, on some of the scope issues involved. One leader with a 'massive host' can be somewhere between 300 Vikings following Leif Erickson to 500,000 Persians following Xerxes. As you had not previously said it was an army in the thousands, I'm betting most people were counting this on being a force between 100-500, a massive number to use against a small village. The party had dealt with a lich previously, so most of us were not thinking of them being capped at 6th (6e game).

As a DM we tend to get descriptive or emotive when presenting a situation. If we are not very clear on what the party faces, we will often run into issues where what the players perceive and what we have planned do not match.

If you had started your post with 'My 6th level players are facing off against an army of humanoids numbering in the thousands' we could have immediately started addressing some of the other problems that your scenario presents. Some of the initial problems are that a force that size would never go after a single village without there being a sizable garrison present to warrant it. If your attacking force outnumbers the population of your target, something is off. You could mitigate this if there was something special (not noted) about the village, such as it sits on the only ford of a large river. Then the army wouldn't be sitting around for three days before attacking, they would simply have their vanguard overrun the place. Putting a 6th level party in the way is asking for a campaign restart, unless the characters have a clear path that will allow them to survive.

In a sandbox environment the party should have left. Fly + Fireball from a party of 4 6th level wizards wouldn't have much impact over a short period. Village does not denote heavy fortifications. From what is presented, unless you had left a neon sign up telling them what they needed to do smart players shouldn't have stuck around. It sounds like the characters did what they could with the limited information presented. Even with a neon sign up, I don't think I'd have stuck around for this. It is presented as a 'no win' scenario without DM fiat.

Segev
2016-01-14, 02:35 PM
This is almost exactly what I thought I was doing.

That's good; it means you were at least trying to do that. The trouble, I think, arises from you having too much focus on what will and will not work, rather than on what the specific obstacles are. Rather than tell your players, "you can't succeed if you do that," I would point out the issues and ask them how they will overcome them.

Fair or not, your own rendition of the events make you come off as "the DM who says 'no.'" Essentially, the only thing they did that made a difference, at least from how it looks in what you wrote and from what it sounds like they saw, was one of the pre-set paths you'd had in mind. Everything else was stonewalled by some variation of "it won't work."

It's HARD to GM in a way that is permissive but not "whatever the PCs try works." But it is doable. The trick, I think, is to already know the limitations of the opposition. Not in a "they will be defeated if this happens" sense, but in a "they can bring this much to bear in this fashion" sense. If the players find a way, then, to thwart that or to hit the enemy where they can't bring sufficient or proper force to bear in response, the PCs have found their own path to victory.

BRC
2016-01-14, 02:57 PM
Two comments if I may:

First, I dont think one should use LoTR as an example, as it is just about the worst example of PCs not feeling big enough. Almost every major battle is won by waiting for reinforcements to solve the problem for you, be it DMPC gamdalf. The eagles, the rohirrim, the ents, or a literal army of the dead. Heck, the Hobbits almost never win battles, they usually convey information (bilbo telling bard about smaugs weakness), talk someone else into fighting (merry and pippen to tree beard), or an occasional burglary or backstab. The whole quest is solved by using a magic macguffin to beat an unstoppable villain.

If I ran an adventure like Lord of the Rings I imagine all the problems I had here would ve magnified ten fold.


Second, no the players mission wasnt to defend the town, because that was impossible. Their mission was to find help. There was apparently a miscommunication and they spent the first fifteen minutes or so thinking that was their mission before I realized it and corrected them, and apparently it was the correction that pissed one of the players off.
The thing about those lord of the rings battles, is that the Heroes still contribute.


As my friends are fond of saying, there are two steps to every plan.

Step 1: Don't lose.

Step 2: Win.

At Helms Deep, the defenders had to hold out until reinforcements arrived. Just because they didn't win by personally killing every Uruk-Hai does not mean they did not win. Just because the Battle was finally won by the reinforcements does not mean that their skills were not necessary to win the battle. Yes, Gandalf and the Rohiram WON the battle, but Aragon, Gimili, Legolas, and the other defenders were still crucial to the victory, and the narrative is framed to make the defenders look Heroic ,rather than just following Gandalf and the Riders.



But, back to you.

No, you are not obligated to accept any plan the PC's make, BUT, you ARE Obligated to have solid reasoning why a plan would not work. Especially in conjunction with other plans.



Ok, so the first day the players spend convincing e local sheriff and many of the local farmers to stay and fight for their land and booby trapping the town. The sorceress spends all of her magic making animated objects to defend the town.

The party sends a runner to the nearest city and ask the local king for help, ...

The players try and argue the morality, ho or, or logic of his actions and pull a captain kirk, ....

The lord has a pack of hunting griffons. One player wants to ride them, ....

... then decide to leave and go fight the invaders to their last breath, ...

Let's unpack all the plans you rejected.

1) Convincing the Townsfolk to fight, Seven-Samurai Style.

2) Booby Trapping the Town, Home-Alone Style.

3) Animating Objects to defend the town, reinforcing the Townsfolk.

4) Sending a Runner to the King for assistance.

5) Sabotaging the Enemy Army

6) Negotiating with the Enemy Leader

7) Getting Griffon air support. Either by stealing the Griffons or convincing the Lord.

Let's break this down.

1), 2, 3, and 5 all work together. Individually, none of them would be enough, but combining the ideas could have been enough.

Sending a Runner to the King, this one I'm okay with, the King does not neccessarily need to risk troops. That said, if they had told the King about the BBEG's Famine Plan, then maybe they could have convinced him. Still, that's okay.

Same with negotiating with the enemy, villains are not required to be sympathetic.


The Lord, however. You knew that the party lacked social skills and animal handling skills, and yet you OOC encouraged them to spend their valuable time and what you knew to be a dead end. If the party is unlikely to get any benefit from something, why are you encouraging them to go do it?


You rejected all these plans, instead you pressured them towards one of the plans you had "Anticipated". All of which took the form "There is something big that can win the battle for you, go get that thing".

So, imagine splitting everything into "Ordinary" Solutions, and "Extraordinary" solutions.

The Base scenario is as follows:

A massive host of savage humanoids appears in the night on the hill overlooking the village and gives the villagers three days to disperse before they destroy the town. The townsfolk are vastly outnumbered, and the local lord tells the people to flee and tells his soldiers not to fight, then dissapears to his hunting lodge.

The Ordinary Solutions are solutions that flow naturally from that scenario, and the PC's abilities.
Things like, using Magic to enhance the defenses, encouraging the lord or townsfolk to fight, booby trapping the town, Sabotaging the enemy army, ect. All those are Ordinary Solutions. They are things one automatically assumes can be done given the scenario above. Most importantly, The Ordinary solutions all originated FROM THE PLAYERS. You didn't need to explicitly say that the town could be booby trapped, that's assumed because Towns can be trapped and fortified.

Now, You presented three Extraordinary Solutions. The Dragon, the Lich, and the Ghosts. These did NOT stem from the scenario above, they were placed into the setting, and each of them represented a source of power well beyond the PC's themselves. If you ask "How do I defend this village!", you don't automatically assume "Well, there's a dragon nearby who can help".


Now, when you prepared the scenario, you came up with three "Acceptable" Solutions, all of which were Extraordinary Solutions. You planted rumors that the Bronze Dragon existed. You decided that it was possible to compel the Lich. You decided it was possible to compel the ghosts. The PC's can't assume those things the same way they can assume that one can fortify a town, or burn enemy tents.


Which brings us back to your statement.


Now here is where the problem arose, as the game went into a more sandbox mode without clear direction, I let the PCs come up with their own plan. I wrote out a few of the more likely scenarios, but was open to accepting other good plans.
That's what you thought you did. In reality, you didn't "Let the PC's come up with their own plan", nor did you come up with the more "Likely" Scenarios.

You, in your position as the GM, came up with three ideas that you decided would work, Knowing that, as the GM, You could MAKE them work. It's not a given that the PC's had the power to compel the ghosts, for example, but you decided that if they tried, you would let them do it
.
The only Ordinary solution you provided was also the one you deemed the Hardest, convincing the lord to help.

The key to running a Sandbox scenario is that the problem needs to be within the realm of "Ordinary" Solutions. If all the acceptable solutions are Extraordinary, then it's not a sandbox, because you cannot expect the PC's to organically come up with an Extraordinary solution.


Think about it like this.

There is a cabin in the woods. The door is locked, but the PC's must get inside.
The following are "Ordinary" Solutions
1) Picking the lock. (Comes from the PC's skills, and the nature of the situation, specifically a locked door)
2) Breaking down the door. (PC's Skills and the nature of the situation)
3) Climbing a tree, getting onto the roof of the cabin, and going down the chimney. (Nature of the situation, cabin in the woods).
4) Tunnelling under the cabin and coming up through the floor. (Nature of the situation)
5) Peering in the window, then using some sort of telekinesis to unlock the door from the inside (PC's Skills and the nature of the situation)

The Extraordinary solution is finding the key.

Sure, Finding the Key works. But the situation as described (A cabin in the woods with a locked door), does nothing to tell the PC's that there might be a key hidden nearby. That solution does not grow organically out of the situation unless you already know that there is a hidden key. You might suspect that there is a hidden key, but you don't have any evidence that is true, it's just a thing that could possible happen.

Compare that to picking the lock. You can safely ASSUME that the lock can be picked, because most locks can be picked. You cannot safely assume that every locked door has a hidden key nearby.

You hid a few keys, and decided that you would be okay if they found another key you hadn't realized was there.


Player A said they didnt like the feeling of helplessness. They play RPGs to be a hero, and doesnt like the idea of a problem to big for the PCs to handle alone, and therefore dismissed any plan that involved asking an NPC for help, and was frustrated that the scenario didn't cater to that style.

Player B wanted me to railroad more. He felt that by letting them waste their precious time limit (he was also pissed that there was a time limit and said that makes everything more frustrating) doing minor things, and when the sage told them it wouldnt be enough he completely stopped caring and didnt even bother to try coming up with more plans. He told me in the future he wants me to make it plainly obviojs which paths will be succsesful before letting the players waste their time trying to find their own solution.

Player C, on the other hand, said I railroaded too much. He was mad that there seemed to be only certain resolutions I had in mind and didnt let them explore other options. He was mad that, for example, I told them their griffon plan wouldnt work rather than letting them try. In other words, almost the complete opposite of player Bs complaint.
This player also wanted to simply abandon the mission like half a dozen times throughout the session, basically every time there was a setback no matter how minor, and got pissed when the other playwrs said they wanted to see it through and I said that this was the only adventure I had planned.

All three are Correct from a certain point of view.
Player A feels helpless, because the solutions you presented all took the power out of the PC's hands. The players don't even get to feel clever for coming up with the idea, since you fed the plan to them OOC. Their characters didn't do anything awesome, and the players didn't get to do anything awesome.

Player B Feels frustrated because, from his perspective, you were just letting them twiddle their thumbs until they stumbled upon one of the solutions you had already deemed acceptable. From your perspective, there were several solutions, plus any others they came up with that you deemed reasonable. They didn't come up with any other acceptable solutions, so from their perspective the only acceptable solutions were the ones you had come up with. The fact that a solution COULD exist does not necessarily make that solution viable.

Player C Feels constrained. Player B would have been okay with being railroaded, but player C wanted freedom, but, for reasons I describe above, he didn't feel like he had it. He felt like he was stumbling around waiting to pick one of your solutions.

Remember, it's not about finding the solution that makes them win. It's about them increasing their chances of victory.

PoeticDwarf
2016-01-14, 03:04 PM
I'm not a flawless DM at all, but I think I can still hell you and I saw one or two things you did wrong. On the other hand, if players do nothing for several hours they are not really creative

Player A was right, the first post explains why

Player B was not right, but he just likes another style. If some players want railroad some dont then just dont. Explain this to B

Player C was right in some ways. You shouldn't have helped them OOC. Just suggest some options. Not one. Also let them test more things

Where it went wrong was around day 2 as you say, there were enough options but players can always come up with more than the DM, at that point you should have allowed more. Not that they win that way but that it helped

Hope this helped
Sorry for my English

CombatBunny
2016-01-14, 03:37 PM
I completely agree with Player C.

Nothing kills it for me faster (as a player), than the GM telling OOC that my plan won't work. That's the right moment when I say "Okay, no more creative input, you tell me what has to be done”.

Nothing I hate more than having the party work on a plan, just to realize that when we are about to put it on action, a wise NPC arrives to tell us that it won’t work.

RPGs are not about problem solving (although there is some of that). Tell me one single movie, book or play in which the characters put a considerable effort in something that serves no purpose at all (in terms of story) and if such an example exists, tell me if you enjoyed that scene.

You are creating a story; the story should follow the players wherever they go or whatever they do. There is a saying in modern RPG systems that say:

“If you can’t come up with an interesting outcome or plot-twist deriving from the player’s failure, then their actions or plans should succeed”

“No outcome of any player’s attempt should result on ‘Nothing happens’”

Thrudd
2016-01-14, 04:39 PM
I completely agree with Player C.

Nothing kills it for me faster (as a player), than the GM telling OOC that my plan won't work. That's the right moment when I say "Okay, no more creative input, you tell me what has to be done”.

Nothing I hate more than having the party work on a plan, just to realize that when we are about to put it on action, a wise NPC arrives to tell us that it won’t work.

RPGs are not about problem solving (although there is some of that). Tell me one single movie, book or play in which the characters put a considerable effort in something that serves no purpose at all (in terms of story) and if such an example exists, tell me if you enjoyed that scene.

You are creating a story; the story should follow the players wherever they go or whatever they do. There is a saying in modern RPG systems that say:

“If you can’t come up with an interesting outcome or plot-twist deriving from the player’s failure, then their actions or plans should succeed”

“No outcome of any player’s attempt should result on ‘Nothing happens’”

I disagree with most of this. The DM should not be creating the story. In an open world game, as the intent is with this one, the players are creating the story by their actions and interactions with the game world. The players should be able to try anything that is within their characters' ability, but it us the game mechanics and logic of the game world which decide whether something works or doesn't, not narrative concerns. D&D is a different format from books, movies and video games, and it should not be attempting to replicate any of these exactly.

I do agree that this was not handled properly, and the players activities should not have been tossed aside with a statement of "this won't work". You let the scenario play out and see what happens, even if you didn't expect the players to take that specific action. If they stay and fight with villagers and booby traps and wild griffons, roll the dice and see what happens. Maybe they kill a lot of bad guys and then get overwhelmed and die. Or they retreat when they see they can't win, and the village gets wiped out, and they go someplace else. Or against all odds the dice are divinely inspired and they somehow drive off the army (with morale rules).

I remember discussing this earlier when it was still being planned. What appears obvious here is that the players did not have sufficient information to make reasonable decisions. As others have mentioned, there probably should have been multipke sessions leading up to this one, where the players became more familiar with the environment and encountered some of the potential solutions to the army problem in-person.

I did predict that the players' first inclination would be the seven samurai scenario, unless they clearly understood that such was hopeless. The second they started suggesting it, I would have made sure they were clear about the scope of what they were facing through NPC exposition or even OOC "you guys realize the village is outnumbered 100 to 1, including women and children, and you're the only ones who know how to fight? Im not telling you what to do, just make sure you know what the characters are dealing with here. Still want to hold the line? Ok, let's see what happens..."

Clearly the players were not made aware of the size and strength of the army and the impossibility of the village defending itself, otherwise they would not have wasted time rallying the villagers. Did they already know of the king and his army as a possible source of aid? They should have, before this session even started, or immediately following the exposition of the size and strength of the army.

The problem looks from here like there is disconnect between what you think you're telling them about the world and what they're hearing/absorbing. You need the three clue rule, really beat them over the head in an obvious way with potentially important information. Also, don't cling to a certain story if you intend a sandbox.

BRC
2016-01-14, 04:53 PM
I feel like I should clarify something.

The lesson to take away from this isn't that the overwhelming horde that frightens the King's armies should be defeatable by a band of rag-tag peasants. The lesson is that you should carefully manage the scale of the threat, if you truely want to run a sandbox or other "Open" scenario.

The issue is the scale of the threat. If you are letting the PC's make their own plans, rather than feeding them a macguffin, then the threat should be one they can handle without the aid of a macguffin.

If you're feeding them a Macguffin, then the threat can be far beyond their capabilities, because their Quest is NOT to defeat the threat, it's to get the Macguffin, and getting the Macguffin is within their capabilities.


The issue is, you framed their mission as "Defeat the Horde", put Defeating the Horde outside their abilities, and instead hid some Macguffins.

If you truely wanted to run a sandbox game, then the Horde should have been beatable without the aid of Macguffins.

When preparing a challenge, you have to consider what is the PC's Actual Goal. As in, what are they actually going to do, vs their Abstract goal.

To use LOTR as an example.
The Abstract Goal is to Defeat Sauron. The Actual Goal is to cast the ring into the fires of Mount Doom. Once that happens, they win, and the Abstract Goal happens anyway.

Sam and Frodo couldn't defeat Sauron. They're not great warriors, if he's even vulnerable to blades. However, their Immediate Goal, cast the ring into the fires of Mount Doom, was attainable.

You Presented them with an Abstract Goal (Defeat the evil army) that was beyond the capabilities you were willing to give them. You ran the session with the Immediate Goal of "Find somebody else to defeat the evil army", which WAS Attainable, but they didn't know it. If you want to run a sandbox game, The Abstract Goal should theoretically be directly attainable, and the PC's actions and decisions increase or decrease their chance of success.

LnGrrrR
2016-01-14, 06:56 PM
One really important thing you should learn from this.

Don't give your players dice rolls if failure would mean the plot stalls. Go with success at a cost from other RPGs. If they fail, instead of the guy clamming up, maybe he tells them if they give him some gold, or do him a favor, or promise to do something for him later. (And then if they don't, you can explore that in the future.)

As noted, it's much better to let players TRY to do something ("I'm going to ride the griffon!") and fail do to a high DC roll than to just tell them outright. A note... if they need to ride the griffon to leave or the plot stalls, just let them ride it. If there's another way across, then allow the roll. And make sure the other way across is semi-obvious or they'll just sit there playing the "What number is the DM thinking of?" guessing game.

If the players come up with something patently ridiculous, make the DC ridiculously high. Don't let them abuse it too much though; have an OOC chat if they keep trying things that have no chance. But once in awhile? Sure, let them have the roll.

LnGrrrR
2016-01-14, 06:59 PM
Lots of good responses here, and a lot of things to think about. I will respond to individual points this weekend when I have some time and a keyboard, but a couple of general comments:

First, I didnt say I was planning on recreating a "Goonies" themed game, I just mentioned the goonies one time as a guideline for the type of characters the party should be trying to create.

Second, let me ask a questions: how do you introduce a major villain early on in the campaign? One who is meant to be a credible threat and a recurring antagonist, but without being so distant and inactive they become like Orcus on his throne or without making them look so incompetant they become a joke like most 80s saturday morning cartoon villains?

Finally, let me ask how the following scenario would go over: The players are in a city that is under seige by a superior force. They are tasked with delivering a message to a nearby kingdom to beg for them to send their army and break the seige. The players are their kingdoms only hope, and they must slip past the beseiging army and cross the monster infested wilderness to deliver the vital mesage before it is too late.

It is basically the same set up, but with a lot more telegraphing, and the players have about the same amount of impact, but I imagine it would go over a lot better. Why?

If the villain is far stronger than them, why is he even bothering? You can have the group attack him, and he use his powers to shoo them off, or have 10 of his armed henchmen step out from the shadows, or some other number of things that OBVIOUSLY scream, "If you fight me right now, you will die."

As far as the "task force", it would go over better because the city is already under siege. Things are ALREADY desperate. You gave your team 2-3 days before stuff hits the fan, so they aren't going to feel that panic until the last moments. Also, realize that your "must sneak to the other town" automatically implies sneaking, telegraphing it, while your scenario left it far more open ended. The king's mission is direct.

One other thing. Don't be afraid to change your plans. If the players come up with an awesome idea to ride griffons, don't introduce something like, "Oh wait these are smaller than normal" because it screams railroading if that fact wasn't already established. What's wrong with letting them take some griffons into battle? If it would totally ruin your plans, you shouldn't have put griffons there. (Chekov's Gun strikes again!)


Hold on a second; giving one sentance about the type of PCs someone should make is the same as telling the players the style of the campaign? So if I said something like "all the players are step siblings in a big family kind of like the brady bunch" you would expect that the DM is trying to run a game in the style of a seventies sitcom?

Also, where are you getting DMPC? The lich had no personality, no goals, no real history, no stats, and only had a name at the last minute because I needed something to right on his tomb. He had less than five minutes lf screen time during which he cast a spell and said maybe ten sentances of dialogue before getting killed. Is that really your definition of a DMPC?

The only reason he was there was to help the players control the ghost army because they lacked the means to easilly do it themselves.

This was a battle of armies, no one person or small group of persons could have swung the tide, not the PCs, not the lich, not the vaillain, not any hypothetical self insert or former PC I have ever ran. It is an army of thousands of individuals in an e6 world.

The players spent the first fifteen minutes of the session thinking they could actually fight off the army without an army of their own, and I guess I humored them precisely the wrong amount before letting them know IC and OOC that it wasnt feasable. Depending on who I talk to I either should have shut them down immediately or let them miraculously succeed.

Why are you making brand new PC's responsible for the battle of armies? Is that a scenario where they would realistically have any ability to affect the battle? Why isn't the town itself trying to help them in building up an army?

John Longarrow
2016-01-14, 07:15 PM
Why are you making brand new PC's responsible for the battle of armies? Is that a scenario where they would realistically have any ability to affect the battle? Why isn't the town itself trying to help them in building up an army?

Its not a town, its a village. Population between 401-900. I'd expect them to be unable to raise more than 8 to 18 combatants normally. If EVERY able bodies person is out, you'd expect about 25%, mostly untrained.

cobaltstarfire
2016-01-14, 07:21 PM
Really what it boils down to is that you said no, over and over and over again until they did exactly what you wanted them to do, and apparently communicated poorly too. That's where you went wrong.


Or basically what BRC said, BRC said a lot of very good stuff.

LnGrrrR
2016-01-14, 07:26 PM
Its not a town, its a village. Population between 401-900. I'd expect them to be unable to raise more than 8 to 18 combatants normally. If EVERY able bodies person is out, you'd expect about 25%, mostly untrained.

Ok... so then why are the bad guys using thousands of soldiers to take on a village of 400 to 900 people? What's so important about this town anyways? If the BBEG has all these minions at his disposal, wouldn't causing famine by raiding supply lines/trade routes make far more sense? Is he just an extremely stupid BBEG?

It's an obviously unwinnable scenario for the PCs without some help.. But as presented it might as well be a fetch quest, especially since it didn't sound like there was really any difference between the three.

Was there any difference between their "choice" to get the lich, dragons, or ghosts? Or would the flavor of victory just been slightly different? Was it a difference in where they're adventuring?

Really, the sane answer would be, "Hey guys, you should probably leave this town, and we'll travel to your king or something and ask them to let you take refuge in his kingdom and see if he'll send help." Kings usually aren't fans of people taking over towns in his area, since most citizens pay taxes. And a story about these seven people herding a town and trying to protect them might be interesting.

As others noted, telling the players more directly that they had to get a MacGuffin would've helped, but having a plot where the PLAYERS get to be the heroes would've been better.

As a communications and networking guy in the military, I can certainly tell you that pilots get way more credit for blowing up stuff than I do, even though communications are obviously important.

NichG
2016-01-14, 08:01 PM
Ok... so then why are the bad guys using thousands of soldiers to take on a village of 400 to 900 people? What's so important about this town anyways? If the BBEG has all these minions at his disposal, wouldn't causing famine by raiding supply lines/trade routes make far more sense? Is he just an extremely stupid BBEG?

It sounds like the BBEG wants to minimize the risk of his own attrition rather than maximize the speed of achieving his goals. Using overwhelming force minimizes the risk of underestimating the opposition, and makes them robust against things like unexpected reinforcements. Presumably he will just burn one village at a time with his concentrated force. But I guess that totally sacrifices shock.

The bigger question is, why is he just camping outside of the village and giving them time to prepare. He should just steamroll them.

LnGrrrR
2016-01-14, 08:52 PM
I'm guessing it was probably to prevent the BBEG from killing the PCs outright :) I mean, at some point PC's can only do so much...

goto124
2016-01-14, 09:29 PM
So! In Talakeal's mind, the army was huge and would've caused a TPK. Thus, the reasonable solution was for the party to look for help.

But in the players' mind, the army couldn't have been that big, because it's a village that's being attacked. Thus, the reasonable solution was to fight the army.

What game system is this? If it's DnD and the PCs are level 6, the players' assumptions are much more reasonable.

Either way, there had been a breakdown in communciation from the start of the campaign at the very least, if not bad campaign design.

Quick question: Talakeal, would you say you'd been playing under railroady DMs for quite a while?

The Glyphstone
2016-01-14, 10:08 PM
Quick question: Talakeal, would you say you'd been playing under railroady DMs for quite a while?

Have you never read a Talakeal thread? The man has spent years living in Bizarro Gaming World. The only DM more railroady than the ones he's described that I've heard of was Chief Circle himself, of Suethulhu fame.

NichG
2016-01-14, 10:51 PM
I'm guessing it was probably to prevent the BBEG from killing the PCs outright :) I mean, at some point PC's can only do so much...

That's a problem then. The BBEG is playing softball to avoid a TPK, but their army is playing hardball when it comes down to the actual confrontation. It's important to be consistent, so that players can build stable expectations about how the world works.



What game system is this? If it's DnD and the PCs are level 6, the players' assumptions are much more reasonable.


Ehh... I feel like this is something people say because they'd like it to be true, but it really isn't. It sounds awesome to say 'our party took on an army and won!' but that's never what actually happens at the table. What really happens is that there's a game of chicken between the DM and the players - the DM puts an army on the table to try to force the players to not use combat, then the players force the issue and still want to do combat, and then the DM folds because running 500 Lv1 NPCs vs 4 Lv6 PCs is just about the most dreadfully boring and tedious thing you can do in D&D. This happens in a variety of ways - the DM creates a load-bearing boss where the enemy troops all flee when that boss is defeated, or they make the troops behave in a pretty idiotic fashion so that the numbers can be reduced to something more manageable (like camping within range of the PCs but not advancing on their strategic goals so that the PCs can do all sorts of hit and run tactics), or the DM throws down 20 enemy tokens (because that looks like a big number) and declares that to be the army, and then says 'oh, when you beat those 20, the other troops break and run/were taken care of by your allies/etc'. Or the army is run as an 'ambient' condition and the PCs throw around big effects but don't actually bring down proportional response to themselves.

But if you just ran the fight of a party of Lv6 PCs versus 500 Lv1 NPCs and actually played the NPC forces to detail (making reasonable equipment choices, diversifying troops, giving units particular jobs, and in general taking into account the existence of small numbers of high level enemies as a serious element of army design) rather than taking shortcuts to abstract them or attack in waves or so on, it would really favor the 500 NPCs. Take 20% of the wealth of that group and buy something like 20 wands of Magic Missile, which could be used in volleys as a no-miss-chance auto-kill against unprepared parties. Have the army march and camp in spread formation, use cheap sources of cover and concealment when under distant ranged attack, open fire with longbows from the most extreme range and fish for natural 20s. Etc.

But that never happens, because its a pain to run and a pain to play, not because the system is actually saying that its reasonable to assume that a group of Lv6 PCs is balanced against an army. CR is wonky, but its worth noting that 500 Lv1 NPCs is a CR 17 encounter.

Talakeal
2016-01-14, 11:35 PM
To answer your questions about overhwleming forces and villages:

Basically the BBEG is not a person, but an aspect of a god who wants to overthrow the kingdoms of men. He materializes in rural regions, calls all of the savage humanoids in the region into a horde, and directs them at local farming communities.

He doesnt attack cities, he only strikes in regions where the wild folk greatly outnumber the civilized, essentially using divine inspiration to get every tribe in the region to raid the same targets at the same time.

He is trying to minimize actual fighting to minimize casualties on his own side as well as the other side to appease one of his allies.



I completely agree with Player C.

Nothing kills it for me faster (as a player), than the GM telling OOC that my plan won't work. That's the right moment when I say "Okay, no more creative input, you tell me what has to be done”.

Nothing I hate more than having the party work on a plan, just to realize that when we are about to put it on action, a wise NPC arrives to tell us that it won’t work.

RPGs are not about problem solving (although there is some of that). Tell me one single movie, book or play in which the characters put a considerable effort in something that serves no purpose at all (in terms of story) and if such an example exists, tell me if you enjoyed that scene.

You are creating a story; the story should follow the players wherever they go or whatever they do. There is a saying in modern RPG systems that say:

“If you can’t come up with an interesting outcome or plot-twist deriving from the player’s failure, then their actions or plans should succeed”

“No outcome of any player’s attempt should result on ‘Nothing happens’”

Yes, plenty of movies. enemies no selling the protaganists plan in movies is usually pretty entertaining. Star Trek does it a lot, particularly the Borg, disaster and kaiju movies have a lot of plans that do nothing, and the second Hobbit movie has the dwarves plans accomplishing jack all to kill the dragon.


Thats really not a style of game I would ever want to run or play in. Maybe it works for improv storytelling types of games, but not for standard games. I cannot picture a world where everything succeeds or fails dramatically outside of a farcical comedy and it is not a world I would want to play in.


One really important thing you should learn from this.

Don't give your players dice rolls if failure would mean the plot stalls. Go with success at a cost from other RPGs. If they fail, instead of the guy clamming up, maybe he tells them if they give him some gold, or do him a favor, or promise to do something for him later. (And then if they don't, you can explore that in the future.)

As noted, it's much better to let players TRY to do something ("I'm going to ride the griffon!") and fail do to a high DC roll than to just tell them outright. A note... if they need to ride the griffon to leave or the plot stalls, just let them ride it. If there's another way across, then allow the roll. And make sure the other way across is semi-obvious or they'll just sit there playing the "What number is the DM thinking of?" guessing game.

If the players come up with something patently ridiculous, make the DC ridiculously high. Don't let them abuse it too much though; have an OOC chat if they keep trying things that have no chance. But once in awhile? Sure, let them have the roll.

Riding the griffons and running away is not just plot stalls, it is plot ends. The player wanted to run away entirely and abandon the town, and it was the only adventure I had planned.

Also, people keep saying to make the character rather than player abilities matter. Wouldnt denying them failure from bad dice roles run contrary to this idea?


Also griffons being too small to ride is a long established fact of my campaign world, not a last minute ass pull. I do it to distinguish them from hippogriffs. Even in this scenario the lord who owned the griffons rode a horse and used the griffons as hunting hounds rather than mounts, which was mentioned to the players earlier in the same session.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-14, 11:52 PM
Yes Talakeal - all of our critiques (which you asked for) are wrong and your session was planned perfectly... that's why it turned out so well?

Talakeal
2016-01-14, 11:53 PM
Really what it boils down to is that you said no, over and over and over again until they did exactly what you wanted them to do, and apparently communicated poorly too. That's where you went wrong.


Or basically what BRC said, BRC said a lot of very good stuff.

I know you are intentionally phrasing this is harshly as possible, but I actually said "yes" over and over again, then said "good idea but you dont have the skills for it" once, and said "You have made a good start but it is still not enough to save the town," I dont think I ever flat out said no except when asked if Griffons could carry a human.

Also, the players didnt do "exactly what I wanted to do", they eventually stumbled upon one of the many paths to success which I had anticipated.

You are trying to make this into a case of basic railroading, its more complicated than that. Only one of the players even mentioned railroading, and one of the other players actually complained about the lack of structure and asked me to railroad harder in the future.


Yes Talakeal - all of our critiques (which you asked for) are wrong and your session was planned perfectly... that's why it turned out so well?

No, not at all. The thread title alone says that I don't feel that way. Actually, I think I am being a hell of a lot harder on myself than any of my players or people on this forum are.

However, I am getting defensive over a few of the more extreme statements like calling the lich a DMPC or implying that I added the griffons inability to carry a rider after the fact to stop the PCs.

I am sorry if I am too defensive, I just get worked up about things like this. Any particular statements of mine which you think are too defensive? I will happily edit my post to tone it down, as I really do appreciate the feedback.

goto124
2016-01-14, 11:57 PM
one of the other players actually complained about the lack of structure and asked me to railroad harder in the future.

That player wished you'd told them from the very start "the army really seriously cannot be defeated by the party alone as it’ll just lead to a TPK, you need to find help first and then you get to use that help to defeat the army".

As opposed to wandering here and there trying to get to your pre-planned solution(s) of "find help", which you'd made such that they were the only ways.

Essentially, the campaign could've gone two ways:

1) Let the players' suggested solution work, as other posters recommended, or

2) Make it clear (with the subtlety of a bludgeon) that 'find help' was the only way. This would be a fairly linear campaign, and informing the players of this beforehand would help a lot towards setting expectations.

LnGrrrR
2016-01-15, 12:04 AM
Talakeal, a failed dice roll doesn't really make the character matter. Especially in the case you described, where the failed dice rolls led to even more flailing around. It's like running a mystery and making players guess at the answer if their dice rolls fail. Essentially, they were trying to "guess" how to solve the puzzle of defending the town. And frustration set in when they didn't guess correctly early enough, because they weren't given/didn't understand the clues.

You said they had "many paths", but they were all variations on the same theme; get help from someone. They weren't really distinct from the sounds of it.

You feel like you said "yes" a lot, but the players obviously feel the opposite. The yes' you granted were small ones, and didn't actually affect the plot at all. You had a plan for them; talk to some big guy to help out. Anything apart from that plan met a big fat "no" from you, whether verbally or through actions you took in the world. It's evident, because none of their plans worked and they eventually succumbed to your ideas of how they could win.

Talakeal
2016-01-15, 12:05 AM
That player wished you'd told them from the very start "the army really seriously cannot be defeated by the party alone as it’ll just lead to a TPK, you need to find help first and then you get to use that help to defeat the army".

My old group (which this player was one of) had a serious problem with analysis paralysis and overthinking plans to the point where they turn straightforward fights into unwinnable scenarios.

In my experiance the more railroady the game the better it goes, but I was really trying to break away from that.

Its a weird situation, people online always say dont railroad, so I try and avoid it, but I still have to have enoug direction and structure to keep the game moving, I think I need more practice finding the right touch.

LnGrrrR
2016-01-15, 12:14 AM
Railroading =/= providing no structure.

You can give someone a task, and then let them figure out the best way to do it, and let the world react naturally to it. If it's a dumb plan, let it play out and they will realize that. Cut your players some slack in most games because they won't know as much as you. Don't penalize them for lack of info, but if it's obviously dumb (I'm going to threaten the king!) then that's their fault. I would say to reread the post about obvious and extraordinary solutions as it is very useful.

Talakeal
2016-01-15, 12:18 AM
Railroading =/= providing no structure.

You can give someone a task, and then let them figure out the best way to do it, and let the world react naturally to it. If it's a dumb plan, let it play out and they will realize that. Cut your players some slack in most games because they won't know as much as you. Don't penalize them for lack of info, but if it's obviously dumb (I'm going to threaten the king!) then that's their fault. I would say to reread the post about obvious and extraordinary solutions as it is very useful.

It is. It is very useful. As I said there is some very good advice in this thread.

NichG
2016-01-15, 01:17 AM
Thinking of this as railroad vs no-railroad is a mistake. It's not about that, and making it about that blurs over the actual issue. Similarly with your reaction to someone saying DMPC. It's not like there's a list of Bad Things where if you avoid everything on the list, what's left is the perfect game. It's more like there are a lot of things that you have to do right, and even if you try to do them, if you do them incorrectly for the situation and the particular players you have then any one of those things can lead to it being a bad game

So if you make a tally count of the times you said 'yes' and the times you said 'no', maybe there's more 'yes' than 'no'. But that doesn't matter if the times you said 'no' were the times when the players were trying to grasp the big picture, and the times you said 'yes' were inconsequential. You can't just check off the 'more yes than no' box on the GM list and then not have the possibility of there being a problem. Whether or not the lich was technically a DMPC (so you can check the 'didn't use DMPCs' box) doesn't matter - what matters is what the inclusion and reliance on the lich did for how the players saw the game scenario and their role in it.

Lets take the example of the 'gryphons are too small to ride' thing. Sure, maybe that's a fact you wrote down somewhere a year ago in your campaign books. You said this is the second session of the campaign with these players. So in all likelihood, the players never received the memo that 'gryphons are too small to ride'. To them, this is a sudden revelation of previously unknown information that invalidated their work. It doesn't matter if it was a pre-existing fact or something you just made up, because from the players' point of view the actual in-game experience is exactly the same.

HammeredWharf
2016-01-15, 03:40 AM
Even after reading this thread, I'm unsure how your players were supposed to arrive at the desired conclusions. Let's take a look at the proposed flow of the campaign:

1) A small village is under siege.
2) A (relatively) gigantic army is against it.
3) Players are told they've no chance of defending the village by themselves.

So, the players try to fortify the village and gather enough troops to defend it, while trying to reason with the enemies. Sounds like a plan. However, what you wanted them to do was:

1) Awaken a lich. What? No! Why would anyone want to awaken an ancient evil?
2) Go to a haunted grove. Why? They don't know there's anything there.
3) "Somehow" use magic to command some ghosts. If a party of E6 characters can command a group of undead, it's pretty clear the undead aren't going to beat an army. Besides, ghosts typically can't move from their burial place.
4) Track down rumors of a bronze dragon. Could be a decent idea, but tracking down rumors isn't what you usually do when you're under siege and tracking a dragon in wilderness could take way more than a few days.
5) Convince the local lord to stay and fight. How would one guy help? Is he a lvl 15 wizard? He could fortify the town, but the PCs already did that. His little hunting griffons probably can't take an army on by themselves.
6) The party joins the raiders. That works, but is something the PCs may not want to do.

Considering the alternatives, running away would be the most reasonable choice, but...


The player wanted to run away entirely and abandon the town, and it was the only adventure I had planned.

...nope.

Your list of most likely scenarios is so bizarre I find it hard to think of a group that would naturally arrive at any of these conclusions. They sound more like crazy plans some players came up with than a bunch of things a DM planned.

Additionally...


Riding the griffons and running away is not just plot stalls, it is plot ends.

Why would it end? The BBEG still has a famine to create. The PCs could still oppose him. In fact, they'd have a good reason to. That jerk destroyed their village!

1of3
2016-01-15, 04:31 AM
However, I am getting defensive over a few of the more extreme statements like [...]

That's why, you never defend yourself against criticism. That's what they tell you in any seminar. Because, when you defend yourself, people will just reiterate their criticism. And then you get more entrenched. And it happens all over and you get even more defensive. Never defend yourself against criticism. Say: "Thank you, I will consider that in the future."

Dimers
2016-01-15, 04:34 AM
Any particular statements of mine which you think are too defensive? I will happily edit my post to tone it down, as I really do appreciate the feedback.

I recommend focusing on the positive instead: Restate a thing you believe to be true that you learned from this thread and that has strong potential to improve your future games. That will show your appreciation much more clearly than editing of previous language would.


Finally, let me ask how the following scenario would go over: The players are in a city that is under seige by a superior force. They are tasked with delivering a message to a nearby kingdom to beg for them to send their army and break the seige. The players are their kingdoms only hope, and they must slip past the beseiging army and cross the monster infested wilderness to deliver the vital mesage before it is too late.

It is basically the same set up, but with a lot more telegraphing, and the players have about the same amount of impact, but I imagine it would go over a lot better. Why?

Yes ... why? If you imagine it would go over better, why do you think so? Not to get all armchair-therapist, but it sounds like you know the answer.

neonchameleon
2016-01-15, 05:47 AM
I know you are intentionally phrasing this is harshly as possible, but I actually said "yes" over and over again, then said "good idea but you dont have the skills for it" once, and said "You have made a good start but it is still not enough to save the town," I dont think I ever flat out said no except when asked if Griffons could carry a human.

In improv terms what you are describing yourself as doing is called "wimping (http://improvencyclopedia.org/glossary/Wimping.html)" (saying no would be "blocking") - although technically saying yes, you were also saying that it was pointless and not actually doing anything with what you were supposedly accepting. It's a slightly subtler trap than just saying no - "no" brings the scene to a screeching halt while wimping just turns the scene into a pointless waste of time exactly the way you have described your game going.


You are trying to make this into a case of basic railroading, its more complicated than that.

Oh, indeed. Basic railroading is saying "You can't do anything except what I the DM wish you to do". It's obvious and straightforward. You managed to pull a subtler twist on it "You can do what you want - but unless it's one of the three things I the DM want you to do it isn't going to do any good; all it's going to do is waste everyone's time. Oh, and I'm going to hide the tracks and signposts."


Its a weird situation, people online always say dont railroad, so I try and avoid it, but I still have to have enoug direction and structure to keep the game moving, I think I need more practice finding the right touch.

The secret almost no one talks about is that almost every adventure path ever is a railroad (there are a couple of exceptions like The Enemy Within campaign) and they do pretty well. Non railroads are better (pushing the game to things that computer RPGs can't do).

My advice would be to get yourself a copy of both Play Unsafe (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Play-Unsafe-Improvisation-Change-Roleplay/dp/1434824594/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452854729&sr=1-1&keywords=play+unsafe) and Apocalypse World (http://apocalypse-world.com/).

goto124
2016-01-15, 05:54 AM
What, exactly, makes Play Unsafe and Apocalypse World the ideal systems to train a GM to not railroad and still give enough structure to keep a game going?

JAL_1138
2016-01-15, 06:42 AM
This is why I just design areas and NPCs and let the players figure out how to make an interesting story out of it. Trying to nail it down to a story, or even multiple potential stories, before the game starts is just too much stress for me. I much prefer a chaotic, sprawling mess of sequential events that might or might not form a cohesive whole to a pre-defined, carefully thought out story arc that might or might not interest the players.

I couldn't agree with this more. It doesn't even mean a sandbox game, necessarily--there still might just be one real quest at a time, like "save the village" or "stop the cultists" or whatever. But don't pre-plan the outcomes of whole situations. Individual puzzles in a dungeon, sure (three clues), butnot situations. There are so many possible ways to resolve any given scenario that I might not think of that the players might. And if the campaign goes a different direction than I had thought it would, so be it.

My group took my current campaign on a completely different track than I had intended. I had plans for a couple of major quests, but one day they went someplace I had done precisely zero prep for and I needed a session, so I yoinked some Adventurers' Leage material and filed the serial numbers off, so to speak, and set up a little sidequest about a group of evil cultists for them to take down. The players got it into their heads that there must be a larger group or ideology behind the cult and kept searching for clues to that rather than following up on either of the quests I had set up for. Their reasoning why was pretty sound; if there were more cultists than the one group they'd just dealt with, them succeeding would be worse than my other antagonists not being dealt with, so they thought they were going after the biggest most pressing problem. I ran with it, and now the campaign centers around the cult, which is organized into independent cells, and essentially consists of investigating and rooting out where the cells are and taking them down. Which has turned out to be lot better, more engaging for them, and easier for me to DM, than my initial campaign plans.

((For me, it helps that we're playing 5th instead of 3.PF, I think--not to bash 3.PF, but it takes a crapload of prepwork to build appropriate encounters and is a lot harder to improvise with as a result, IMO. Not impossible, but harder. Even in E6; that just caps the power level. Both TSR-era D&D and 5e are fairly easy to prep and to "wing it" for, to me. Monsters and NPCs aren't quite so complex and are thus pretty quick to pull out of the manual and throw at the party if I need to build an encounter quickly.))

CombatBunny
2016-01-15, 07:50 AM
Thats really not a style of game I would ever want to run or play in. Maybe it works for improv storytelling types of games, but not for standard games. I cannot picture a world where everything succeeds or fails dramatically outside of a farcical comedy and it is not a world I would want to play in.

I hope that you remember your words, so that you walk away if you ever are invited to play systems like Fate, HeroQuest 2nd Edition, Mutants and Masterminds, Valiant Universe, The burning wheel and many new systems that share the same philosophy.

Not every RPG system is meant to simulate a world, there are systems that respond and revolve around telling stories and using mechanics to attend dramatic needs, not to create a "Matrix". Not that there is something wrong with simulation RPGs, but it’s pretentious to think that outside that everything that is left is comedy.

neonchameleon
2016-01-15, 08:00 AM
What, exactly, makes Play Unsafe and Apocalypse World the ideal systems to train a GM to not railroad and still give enough structure to keep a game going?

Play Unsafe is a book of guidance drawing on freeform LARPS and improv drama.

Apocalypse World gives strong guidance to the GM which amongst other things doesn't allow the GM to prepare anything before the first session - but adds in tools for structure to keep the game going.

Kardwill
2016-01-15, 08:29 AM
Thats really not a style of game I would ever want to run or play in. Maybe it works for improv storytelling types of games, but not for standard games. I cannot picture a world where everything succeeds or fails dramatically outside of a farcical comedy and it is not a world I would want to play in.

I think you misunderstand. There is no need to be excessive or spectacular, but the sentence means that failure should drive the story forward, and not block it. If failing is boring or frustrating, why have it on the table? So if you set up a situation where the PCs can fail (for example a dice roll, or a problem solving situation where some solutions are doomed to fail like the one you played), you should be ready to play the consequences of this failure in an interesting way. If you can't think of any, it means that your players won't find it interesting either, and you should probably let them succeed, at least partially, or need to have them understand real quick that it's impossible

An example : The players want to get to the Old Tower to save the princess. They decide to go through the Dark Forest to avoid detection by the Overlord's army on the main road. They plan, get some gear, get a map, and go. And the party ranger fails his tracking roll. How do you frame that failure?
1 - He fails and can't find his way. Full stop, the party has to try another way, turn back and use the main road. A direct block, that invalidates their plan, all the time they (and you) invested in it, and portrays the PCs as losers.
2 - He fails and can't find his way. Have another player try a tracking roll : Very bad, invalidates the diceroll and paints the ranger as an incompetent on his home turf.
3 - He can't find his way now. Reroll after a few hours : Interesting only if there is a real impact, a tension about the time frame, and the players are aware of it. Otherwise it's a useless roll. But either way, most of the time, it feels lame. And what will you do when he fails AGAIN?
4 - He finds his way, but it took too long. Now, it's dawn, and they have less than an hour to rescue the kidnapped princess before the overlord marry her.
5 - He fails and they don't progress fast enough (or the forest is more difficult to navigate or more confusing than he thought). Some time is lost, and now the party will have to devise a way to rectify the situation (but not another tracking diceroll). Maybe he'll climb a tree, maybe the wizard will talk with a bird... Anyway, they have another chance to look awesome.
6 - He fails, and they can't go through the Forest, but they meet a druid who gives them some interesting intel, so it was not a complete loss of time.
7 - He finds the wrong way. They can see the old tower nearby, but that chasm was not on the map, and circling it would take too long. How do they cross it?
8 - Goblin scouts ambush! The good news is that they probably know the way to the old tower, since it's their base camp. The BAD news is that they sent a messenger to warn the Overlord.
9 - Well, we didn't find the Old Tower, but what's that cave, and why is there smoke coming out of it?

That example is about a diceroll, but can be applied to failure due to a player's choice. Your response to your player's suggestions were mostly 1 and 3. They are easy, "instictive" ways to frame the "failure", but they are also frustrating and/or not very interesting.

Keep failure entertaining. Even if the players don't get what they want, they should not be bored. And a complication/consequence is more entertaining than a block or a retry :)

And even if you're uninspired, go forward, don't push the players back to square one. Even if the king is unwilling to help, some of his knights may decide it's their duty to protect the village. Or he could scoff at the idea and mention that he doubts a humanoid army would cross "an haunted dragon lair over a lich necropolis".

And yes, I know it's not easy to think of it, especially "live" during a game ;)

JAL_1138
2016-01-15, 08:33 AM
Something else that may be helpful, not really helpful with this session but that will be of use in the future--your players don't see your prepwork until they get to it. If they skip an area, they'll never know what you prepped to put there. So re-use it elsewhere.

Don't force it on them--if you plan for them to cross the river at Troll Bridge and they go a mile upstream to ford it instead, don't put trolls at the ford because dangit, there's going to be a troll fight this session--but find someplace else later on where you could logically use trolls, or reskin and refluff the trolls as regenerating undead and plunk them in the next crypt the party goes to, or drop the regenerating aspect and reskin them as orc brutes, or whatever.

If you design an expansive map for a town and have interiors for several buildings and a ton of interesting NPCs, but the players just spend the night at the inn and leave in the morning, take those pieces you've built already and use them in the next town (with the maps redrawn if they saw a map of the place) and the location-specific details and/or names changed.

Done right, the players will never know you're doing it unless you let on somehow (OOC saying so, or reusing a quest setup or NPC or building or whatever you've already described to them in detail without enough alterations to hide it, for example). It'll save you a ton of prep time and help you react to unexpected player choices.

AMFV
2016-01-15, 08:38 AM
Something else that may be helpful, not really helpful with this session but that will be of use in the future--your players don't see your prepwork until they get to it. If they skip an area, they'll never know what you prepped to put there. So re-use it elsewhere.

Don't force it on them--if you plan for them to cross the river at Troll Bridge and they go a mile upstream to ford it instead, don't put trolls at the ford because dangit, there's going to be a troll fight this session--but find someplace else later on where you could logically use trolls, or reskin and refluff the trolls as regenerating undead and plunk them in the next crypt the party goes to, or drop the regenerating aspect and reskin them as orc brutes, or whatever.

If you design an expansive map for a town and have interiors for several buildings and a ton of interesting NPCs, but the players just spend the night at the inn and leave in the morning, take those pieces you've built already and use them in the next town (with the maps redrawn if they saw a map of the place) and the location-specific details and/or names changed.

Done right, the players will never know you're doing it unless you let on somehow (OOC saying so, or reusing a quest setup or NPC or building or whatever you've already described to them in detail without enough alterations to hide it, for example). It'll save you a ton of prep time and help you react to unexpected player choices.


This is good advice, as a corollary, it's often a good idea to prepare stuff that you aren't necessarily planning to use, basically encounters you can just drop anywhere, or buildings that you can just use as necessary. This lets you be more flexible as things develop. Sometimes I'll even prepare entire quest threads, that way if it seems like my players aren't into whatever I have going on, they can pick up a different type of thread.


As far as letting the peasants win... You don't need to do that, the players can fail. But you should have let them mount a defense, even a futile one, maybe given them the opportunity to save some of the villagers as they were overwhelmed, and as they inflicted casualties on their enemies, they'd have had a sense of accomplishment.

Kardwill
2016-01-15, 08:49 AM
As far as letting the peasants win... You don't need to do that, the players can fail. But you should have let them mount a defense, even a futile one, maybe given them the opportunity to save some of the villagers as they were overwhelmed, and as they inflicted casualties on their enemies, they'd have had a sense of accomplishment.

Yup, you can fail and yet feel like a Big Damn Hero, as long as you DID something and had some small-scale or personnal feel-good wins during a disaster. In fact, some players (like me) probably would feel it's a cooler "victory" than a "normal" win would have been, 'cause you can be all tragic and badass and stuff. As long as it's "my" pirrhic victory, and not some preplanned stuff.

JAL_1138
2016-01-15, 09:11 AM
This is good advice, as a corollary, it's often a good idea to prepare stuff that you aren't necessarily planning to use, basically encounters you can just drop anywhere, or buildings that you can just use as necessary. This lets you be more flexible as things develop. Sometimes I'll even prepare entire quest threads, that way if it seems like my players aren't into whatever I have going on, they can pick up a different type of thread.


Very much this. I have a bit of a library of this stuff built up by now, so it's a bit easier for me than for a new DM, but I try to have some wilderness encounters, underground encounters, and town/city encounters ready to go. They can all be reskinned and refluffed--that gang of bandits has stats that can be repurposed for city guards, for example--and I keep a few spare caves (easy to redraw as tunnels or a crypt or part of a sewer or a forest path), some spare small dungeons (nothing big; a half-dozen rooms at most, enough to occupy a session or most of one but not be a ton of work), some outdoor areas, some back alleys, and some spare buildings (all easy to repurpose in various ways). Small quests are relatively easy to rejigger as necessary--go save X and bring it/them back, go stop the X from doing Y, investigate the suspicious-acting shopkeeper, so on and so forth. You only need a few to start with. Published modules are good to yoink these from if you change them around just enough to be unrecognizeable, since so much of the work is done for you.

And as a bonus, it makes you look like Batman, because you've got something prepared for just about anything they do.



As far as letting the peasants win... You don't need to do that, the players can fail. But you should have let them mount a defense, even a futile one, maybe given them the opportunity to save some of the villagers as they were overwhelmed, and as they inflicted casualties on their enemies, they'd have had a sense of accomplishment.

Exactly. And even if they TPK, roll new characters, start elsewhere, a refugee from the sacked village reveals what happened, then continue the campaign, but with a new focus, e.g., get messages to the local lords and try to secure their allegiance to build an army that can stop the horde. Help a few (better-equipped) places defend against sieges with a real chance of success, if they want to. Plenty of other ways for it to go, too, not just those.

Segev
2016-01-15, 11:11 AM
It's been touched on and probably said outright a few times, but I would like to reiterate that it sounds like you saw this mission as "get help, because the opposition is too powerful to take on without it." Therefore, victory condition is "get help to come."

You are running a planned adventure (not a bad thing) in that you have specific ideas of what that help can be, and you do not expect anything the PCs can do to really change the course of the fight, because it's so overwhelming.

The key is to manage expectations and set clear goals, here: somebody needs to frame the quest as "run and find help" for them.

To accomplish that, in this particular scenario, I would suggest that there be a natural leader NPC in town who will take charge of the defenses. Maybe he's the barkeep who's a retired soldier, or the blacksmith who knows how to build defenses and traveled with an adventuring party in his youth. Regardless, somebody in town, when the PCs rally the townsfolk, solidifies and acknowledges their victory in doing so by volunteering, "I will stay and help mount our defenses. I think we can hold off for a day or two before the horde overwhelms us; that gives you at least 4 days if you leave NOW to find help and bring it back here!"

You've taken the part(s) of the overall task (save the town) that you do not have an adventure prepared for and don't think the PCs can or should do out of the PCs' hands by saying "This NPC will take care of it." You've provided a (mildly variable) time limit, with an implied possibility that it's shorter than indicated (what if he's wrong about how long they can hold out?), and you've given them a definite task. Now their job is to figure out what form that "help" might take, and then to seek it out.

They might go personally to the King, since they sent a runner. While there, you should have fallbacks to point them at the other options if they fail (e.g. somebody's suggestion of some member(s) of court scoffing that no superstitious barbarian savages would dare assault a supposed lich's lair, or that the dragon in the area would surely devour so tempting a source of food, or the like).

But the essence is, when you've got something as definite as "they have to get help" as the victory condition, you need to frame the mission that way in character for them. Don't just imply it; have somebody who can out-and-out tell them "this is your mission/quest" in case they don't pick up on it, themselves.

And if they flat-out reject the mission/quest, that's when you acknowledge that you are not prepared for them to do that, and ask them what they plan to do so you can plan for next session.

Airk
2016-01-15, 11:12 AM
Riding the griffons and running away is not just plot stalls, it is plot ends. The player wanted to run away entirely and abandon the town, and it was the only adventure I had planned.

And do you not see a problem with this? I mean, not only is this an obvious, logical choice on the part of the party, but even if it weren't, if you're trying to run a remotely freeform game, you need to be able to deal with the player's saying "screw it, we're not going to deal with this."


It is. It is very useful. As I said there is some very good advice in this thread.

Okay, so let's talk about "railroading" vs "directed adventures"

Actually, let's not. Let's have you do some homework.

Here (http://theangrygm.com/coloring-inside-the-lines-linear-adventure-design/)
Here (http://theangrygm.com/breaking-the-jell-o-mold/)
And Here. (http://theangrygm.com/from-tiny-acorns-branching-adventure-design/)

A fine and relatively nuanced explanation of the advantages and disadvantages of agency vs structure. Hopefully it will prove useful in understanding the differences between a game that gives the players ideas of where to go, and a railroad, and a game that leaves the players adrift without guidance and a wide open adventure full of awesome possibilities.

But yeah, you could also probably stand to consume some games that use that "style of game you would never want to run or play in" because frankly, it doesn't sound like you have the faintest idea what it entails.

BRC
2016-01-15, 11:28 AM
Alright, let's make this an excersize.
Talakeal, now that you have the benefit of hindsight and the advice of this thread, describe to us how you would revise that adventure.

Talakeal
2016-01-15, 11:54 AM
This is good advice, as a corollary, it's often a good idea to prepare stuff that you aren't necessarily planning to use, basically encounters you can just drop anywhere, or buildings that you can just use as necessary. This lets you be more flexible as things develop. Sometimes I'll even prepare entire quest threads, that way if it seems like my players aren't into whatever I have going on, they can pick up a different type of thread.


As far as letting the peasants win... You don't need to do that, the players can fail. But you should have let them mount a defense, even a futile one, maybe given them the opportunity to save some of the villagers as they were overwhelmed, and as they inflicted casualties on their enemies, they'd have had a sense of accomplishment.

I dont know; some of my players tend to get REALLY mad when they fail, to the point of throwing OOC tantrums. Furthermore there was a very real chance of a TPK, and We all put way too much effort into this game to end it on the second session.

Its was doable, but would have been really hard to pull off.


And do you not see a problem with this? I mean, not only is this an obvious, logical choice on the part of the party, but even if it weren't, if you're trying to run a remotely freeform game, you need to be able to deal with the player's saying "screw it, we're not going to deal with this."



Okay, so let's talk about "railroading" vs "directed adventures"

Actually, let's not. Let's have you do some homework.

Here (http://theangrygm.com/coloring-inside-the-lines-linear-adventure-design/)
Here (http://theangrygm.com/breaking-the-jell-o-mold/)
And Here. (http://theangrygm.com/from-tiny-acorns-branching-adventure-design/)

A fine and relatively nuanced explanation of the advantages and disadvantages of agency vs structure. Hopefully it will prove useful in understanding the differences between a game that gives the players ideas of where to go, and a railroad, and a game that leaves the players adrift without guidance and a wide open adventure full of awesome possibilities.

But yeah, you could also probably stand to consume some games that use that "style of game you would never want to run or play in" because frankly, it doesn't sound like you have the faintest idea what it entails.

Only one of the players wanted to run away though, the other players said no. Also, he didnt need to ride the griffons to run away, there was nothing (ic) stopping them from just walking away.

How do you define remotely freeform? Are you saying a sandbox or just not a railroad?

Very few DMs I know dont prep adventures and get peeved that their work was wasted (to say nothing of everyones time when they have nothing else planned for the evening) if they players dont give it their best.

I'll read those links in a bit, thank you for them.

Yes, I know I should expand the type of games I play. I actually had this conversation with my DM recently, I said I dont like narrativist games, but I would really be interested in playing one as it would be good for me to give them a chance. I have tried a few times in the past, but so far my experiances have been overhwelmingly narrative.


I hope that you remember your words, so that you walk away if you ever are invited to play systems like Fate, HeroQuest 2nd Edition, Mutants and Masterminds, Valiant Universe, The burning wheel and many new systems that share the same philosophy.

Not every RPG system is meant to simulate a world, there are systems that respond and revolve around telling stories and using mechanics to attend dramatic needs, not to create a "Matrix". Not that there is something wrong with simulation RPGs, but it’s pretentious to think that outside that everything that is left is comedy.

The "dramatic failures are comedy" is a quote that often gets thrown at me for playing with fumble rules. While I dont buy it, I cant help but feel that the argument has some merit if every single failure is a dramatic one.

As a curiosity, doesnt that lead more towards railroading? In a movie failure is usually used to establish mood, establish a threat, or corral the protaganist into an unusual situation, which are all exactly the sort of thing this thread seems to be urging me to avoid. Doesnt the GM deciding if failure is an option at all cause a lot more of that? Genuinly curious as I am not sure how these games handle the decision of when failure is on the line.



I recommend focusing on the positive instead: Restate a thing you believe to be true that you learned from this thread and that has strong potential to improve your future games. That will show your appreciation much more clearly than editing of previous language would.



Yes ... why? If you imagine it would go over better, why do you think so? Not to get all armchair-therapist, but it sounds like you know the answer.

I dont know why that scenario feels better. I think it is, but no idea why. It is more "ordinary" and direct, but the players have just as much personal impact on the outcome. I am genuinly baffled why people would feel heroic in this scenario but not in mine.



That's why, you never defend yourself against criticism. That's what they tell you in any seminar. Because, when you defend yourself, people will just reiterate their criticism. And then you get more entrenched. And it happens all over and you get even more defensive. Never defend yourself against criticism. Say: "Thank you, I will consider that in the future."

Ok, I will try. Thank you for the advice, it is sure to get better results.


Even after reading this thread, I'm unsure how your players were supposed to arrive at the desired conclusions. Let's take a look at the proposed flow of the campaign:

1) A small village is under siege.
2) A (relatively) gigantic army is against it.
3) Players are told they've no chance of defending the village by themselves.

So, the players try to fortify the village and gather enough troops to defend it, while trying to reason with the enemies. Sounds like a plan. However, what you wanted them to do was:

1) Awaken a lich. What? No! Why would anyone want to awaken an ancient evil?
2) Go to a haunted grove. Why? They don't know there's anything there.
3) "Somehow" use magic to command some ghosts. If a party of E6 characters can command a group of undead, it's pretty clear the undead aren't going to beat an army. Besides, ghosts typically can't move from their burial place.
4) Track down rumors of a bronze dragon. Could be a decent idea, but tracking down rumors isn't what you usually do when you're under siege and tracking a dragon in wilderness could take way more than a few days.
5) Convince the local lord to stay and fight. How would one guy help? Is he a lvl 15 wizard? He could fortify the town, but the PCs already did that. His little hunting griffons probably can't take an army on by themselves.
6) The party joins the raiders. That works, but is something the PCs may not want to do.

Considering the alternatives, running away would be the most reasonable choice, but...



...nope.

Your list of most likely scenarios is so bizarre I find it hard to think of a group that would naturally arrive at any of these conclusions. They sound more like crazy plans some players came up with than a bunch of things a DM planned.

Additionally...



Why would it end? The BBEG still has a famine to create. The PCs could still oppose him. In fact, they'd have a good reason to. That jerk destroyed their village!

Yeah, and I think this is the crux of the issue. And the real kicker is, I knew it going into the adventure.

I knew where I wanted it to end, but I failed to make the neccessary connections and just attempted to wing it.

I guess I just need to step ip and not let it happen again in the future, a prospect for which this thread, despite all my indignant grumbling, really is helping.


Thinking of this as railroad vs no-railroad is a mistake. It's not about that, and making it about that blurs over the actual issue. Similarly with your reaction to someone saying DMPC. It's not like there's a list of Bad Things where if you avoid everything on the list, what's left is the perfect game. It's more like there are a lot of things that you have to do right, and even if you try to do them, if you do them incorrectly for the situation and the particular players you have then any one of those things can lead to it being a bad game

So if you make a tally count of the times you said 'yes' and the times you said 'no', maybe there's more 'yes' than 'no'. But that doesn't matter if the times you said 'no' were the times when the players were trying to grasp the big picture, and the times you said 'yes' were inconsequential. You can't just check off the 'more yes than no' box on the GM list and then not have the possibility of there being a problem. Whether or not the lich was technically a DMPC (so you can check the 'didn't use DMPCs' box) doesn't matter - what matters is what the inclusion and reliance on the lich did for how the players saw the game scenario and their role in it.

Lets take the example of the 'gryphons are too small to ride' thing. Sure, maybe that's a fact you wrote down somewhere a year ago in your campaign books. You said this is the second session of the campaign with these players. So in all likelihood, the players never received the memo that 'gryphons are too small to ride'. To them, this is a sudden revelation of previously unknown information that invalidated their work. It doesn't matter if it was a pre-existing fact or something you just made up, because from the players' point of view the actual in-game experience is exactly the same.

Again, I know I messed up.

But I also know that it isnt because I used a DMPC or because I am the worst railroader that ever did railroad. Such accusations arent helpful and hurt my feelings, so they put me on the defensive.

I would rather spend time talking about actual flaws with my adventure style rather than perceived insults, although I suppose ignoring them and moving on would probably be a better solution that trying to defend myself against them.


Again, thanks to everyone for their advice, there are a few real gems in here.

John Longarrow
2016-01-15, 11:55 AM
Riding the griffons and running away is not just plot stalls, it is plot ends. The player wanted to run away entirely and abandon the town, and it was the only adventure I had planned.

One thing you should take away from this is ALWAYS plan for when the players don't want to follow your planned adventure. I've had a time where I had 6 different adventure paths lined up. All of the were provided as hooks for the characters, all of them had their first 3 sessions fleshed out and ready to roll. Players didn't bite on any of them. I basically stopped the session, talked to the players about what they wanted to play and which way they wanted the game to go, and called it a night. Never feel like you have to run on a given night. Never feel like you can't stop a session to find out what the players want. Never feel like you have to spend a minimum amount of time behind the screen.

It would be far better to have two hour sessions once a week where everyone is enjoying the game than weekend marathons that the players don't enjoy because 'Its all I had prepared'.

CharonsHelper
2016-01-15, 11:57 AM
Apocalypse World gives strong guidance to the GM which amongst other things doesn't allow the GM to prepare anything before the first session - but adds in tools for structure to keep the game going.

I will say - while from what I've heard some interesting concepts/mechanics from Apocalypse World - when I got the pdf to read them - I couldn't get through it. The writing is TERRIBLE. It felt like it was written by the kid from Catcher in the Rye. (In my opinion - among the world's most overrated 'classics'.)

John Longarrow
2016-01-15, 12:02 PM
Oh, indeed. Basic railroading is saying "You can't do anything except what I the DM wish you to do". It's obvious and straightforward. You managed to pull a subtler twist on it "You can do what you want - but unless it's one of the three things I the DM want you to do it isn't going to do any good; all it's going to do is waste everyone's time. Oh, and I'm going to hide the tracks and signposts."

This sounds waaaaay to much like an ex-girlfriend of mine... Hence the 'EX'.

BRC
2016-01-15, 12:18 PM
I dont know why that scenario feels better. I think it is, but no idea why. It is more "ordinary" and direct, but the players have just as much personal impact on the outcome. I am genuinly baffled why people would feel heroic in this scenario but not in mine.


It's about the framing, and expectations.

Your scenario is framed "Defeat the evil army". As soon as that is the stated objective, the players expect to be leading the charge against the evil army. That's the power fantasy that is sold by the scenario.

Instead, what they did was run off and find somebody else to solve the problem for them, which is not nearly as heroic.

If you frame the initial scenario as "Slip through enemy lines, evade pursuit and survive in deadly wilderness to deliver a crucial message", you're selling the scenario more accurately.


Framing is very important when DMing. The way the scenario is initially described is going to spark the Player's imaginations.

The Scenario, as it is initially framed, is ALSO going to be something the Players assume is within their capabilities. If you sell them "Defeat the giant army", they are going to assume that they can defeat the giant army. If you sell them "Slip through enemy lines", they are going to assume they are strong/skilled enough to slip through enemy lines.

When you framed the scenario as Defeating the Army, the Players assumed that was within their grasp. The Adventure was then an exercise in disappointment as they learned that, no, they were not infact that good, and instead had to settle for the lesser fantasy of finding help. You oversold the heroic fantasy, and they were disappointed. Player A felt helpless because he went into things with the assumption that they could be the army using ordinary tactics, and when they had to resort to extraordinary methods (Not even to help them win, but to win the battle for them), they felt let down.



Consequently, a good way to make your players feel awesome is to UNDERSELL the fantasy. Sell them "Slip through enemy lines", but on their way out they discover some enemy superweapon. Suddenly, they have the more heroic "Destroy the Superweapon" plot. In-character, the PC's set out to sneak through enemy lines, but when they saw the opportunity, they were badass enough to take it and save the day.

Talakeal
2016-01-15, 12:20 PM
One thing you should take away from this is ALWAYS plan for when the players don't want to follow your planned adventure. I've had a time where I had 6 different adventure paths lined up. All of the were provided as hooks for the characters, all of them had their first 3 sessions fleshed out and ready to roll. Players didn't bite on any of them. I basically stopped the session, talked to the players about what they wanted to play and which way they wanted the game to go, and called it a night. Never feel like you have to run on a given night. Never feel like you can't stop a session to find out what the players want. Never feel like you have to spend a minimum amount of time behind the screen.

It would be far better to have two hour sessions once a week where everyone is enjoying the game than weekend marathons that the players don't enjoy because 'Its all I had prepared'.

True, but as a said only one of the characters wanted to run away from everything. The other players wanted to keep on with the adventure and got more than a bit peeved at his repeated attempts to abandon the town (and the rest of the party).


Alright, let's make this an excersize.
Talakeal, now that you have the benefit of hindsight and the advice of this thread, describe to us how you would revise that adventure.

Good question. I will think on it and give you a full answer tommorow when I have access to a real keyboard again.

Kalmageddon
2016-01-15, 12:25 PM
I think I can help a little with this.
You see, we seem to have a similar style of GMing, so maybe I can give you a bit of insight on how I make it work.

First, I would like to point to the observations I think are most pertinent:

The way you thought the crisis would be solved was too reliant on supernatural forces that are either counter-intuitive or "OP" compared to the party.
This is a really good point. It makes sense that the power of the PCs might not be enough to face an army. But having them enlist creatures above their league as help rubs me the wrong way. Both as a GM and as a player I would have rather given them the chance to enlist help from either creatures of power equal to their own, or numerous creatures weaker than them.
This makes the PCs feel like they are making allies and asking for help from a position of strength and importance, instead of having to beg more powerful entities to help them. The exception could be some sort of construct or creature that is not sentient, because that way the PCs don't feel like they are being protected by an OP character, they feel like they have acquired a new cool toy.

The setup didn't give enough reason to stay and help against this crisis.
I realize this is not the main reason your campaign went badly, but it still deserves some consideration.
From an IC point of view, when faced with impossibile odds, the PCs should have chosen to simply retreat. Avoid a direct confrontation with the enemy army and perhaps go on an adventure to find out a way to stop this at its source. The people of this farming community also seemed to be in no real danger. If the PCs had the time to go and enlist help, surely these people had enough time to pick up their things, any amount of food they had and go take shelter inside the castle of the local lord. Which incidentally tends to be exactly what happened in real life in these kind of scenarios.
Either the army should have been smaller and thus give the PCs the chance to tip the balance of the upcoming battle to their favour, or the village should have been of great strategic importance so that the PCs had a very good reason to keep trying to save it.

These are, in my opinion, the two most pertinent consideration that cropped up in the thread.
About my personal experience in running these kind of games, I'll admit that I treasure OOC communication as the holy grail of running a smooth game. I often talk to my players during the game to make sure I got their intentions right and clarify any doubts or misunderstandings they might have on the situation they are about to get themselves involved with.
This is not done instead of IC communication but rather on top of it: first I let them find out about the issue IC, roleplay their reaction and if they are discussing how to approach the issue at lenght or if I feel that the situation is too complicated and at risk of misunderstandings, I explain everything schematically OOC and I let them pitch a few ideas OOC first so that I can at least say "that might work" or "you don't know, you have to try" or "this is a terribile idea and your character knows it because...*IC explanation follows*".
This compensates for the fact that the PCs often have more time to come up with a plan than the Players do, so OOC stands in for "offscreen" discussions and planning that would be boring or tedious to play in detail. It also allows me to make absolutely sure that they understand everything correctly.
Aside from that, they have all the agency in the world to do as they please, I simply do this to be sure that they make an informed choice when such a thing would be logical or reasonable IC.

TL;DR:
-Don't make your PCs call bigger, more powerful NPCs for help when needed, make them elist the help of equals or lesser beings instead.
-Be sure the setup for the quest is not forced.
-Talk to your players OOC during the session and make sure to clear the air from any misudnerstandings and give them a recap of everything plus some additional clarifications that you feel their characters are entitled to, either because of IC knowledge or time to do research.

JNAProductions
2016-01-15, 01:46 PM
Alright, let's make this an excersize.
Talakeal, now that you have the benefit of hindsight and the advice of this thread, describe to us how you would revise that adventure.

Seconding this 100%. You said you'd get to it after you get a real keyboard, so I will respond as a player would to your response to BRC.

neonchameleon
2016-01-15, 07:07 PM
I will say - while from what I've heard some interesting concepts/mechanics from Apocalypse World - when I got the pdf to read them - I couldn't get through it. The writing is TERRIBLE. It felt like it was written by the kid from Catcher in the Rye. (In my opinion - among the world's most overrated 'classics'.)

Would it help to suggest you get a copy of Monsterhearts (http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/monsterhearts/) - a very well written game based on the Apocalypse World engine, although not one I'd play with my D&D group (it even works as a very nice deconstruction and explanation of the genre it is modelling). That should give you enough to play off just the AW playbooks and handouts (other than the Hx rules which are possibly the weakest part of the game).

1of3
2016-01-15, 07:34 PM
The "dramatic failures are comedy" is a quote that often gets thrown at me for playing with fumble rules. While I dont buy it, I cant help but feel that the argument has some merit if every single failure is a dramatic one.

As a curiosity, doesnt that lead more towards railroading? In a movie failure is usually used to establish mood, establish a threat, or corral the protaganist into an unusual situation, which are all exactly the sort of thing this thread seems to be urging me to avoid. Doesnt the GM deciding if failure is an option at all cause a lot more of that? Genuinly curious as I am not sure how these games handle the decision of when failure is on the line.

"Dramatic" here means "interesting". You can't go wrong, when every failure is "interesting". Interesting means changing the status quo. "Nothing happens" is not interesting. A problem with your adventure was that several attempts resulted in "nothing happens".

And no, no one will tell you corralling the protagonists in an unusual situation is bad. That's a good thing. And none of the games discussed here let's the GM take bigger decisions about when failure is on the line as D&D does. Think about it. The GM sets the DC. The GM decides the consequences. That's as much deciding as you can possibly have to do.

Apocalypse Engine games that were mentioned radically reduce these decisions. There are no variable DCs. 10+ is very good, 7-9 is partly successful (the rules will tell you exactly what that means for each kind of action), less than 6 provides a "GM move", that means, something bad happens. Those in include
- Hurt them
- Split them
- Put them in a tight spot
- Turn their stuff back on them

List depends on what PbtA game your looking at. But all in all, that is much less deciding than D&D does. The only thing you have to decide is: "What kind of bad stuff is appropriate, when the roll fails?"

Talakeal
2016-01-16, 01:49 AM
"Dramatic" here means "interesting". You can't go wrong, when every failure is "interesting". Interesting means changing the status quo. "Nothing happens" is not interesting. A problem with your adventure was that several attempts resulted in "nothing happens".

And no, no one will tell you corralling the protagonists in an unusual situation is bad. That's a good thing. And none of the games discussed here let's the GM take bigger decisions about when failure is on the line as D&D does. Think about it. The GM sets the DC. The GM decides the consequences. That's as much deciding as you can possibly have to do.

Apocalypse Engine games that were mentioned radically reduce these decisions. There are no variable DCs. 10+ is very good, 7-9 is partly successful (the rules will tell you exactly what that means for each kind of action), less than 6 provides a "GM move", that means, something bad happens. Those in include
- Hurt them
- Split them
- Put them in a tight spot
- Turn their stuff back on them

List depends on what PbtA game your looking at. But all in all, that is much less deciding than D&D does. The only thing you have to decide is: "What kind of bad stuff is appropriate, when the roll fails?"

If there is no variable difficulty or DM discretion what stops players from doing things that are wildly innapropriate? Like what if someone set out to create a nuclear reactor in a medieval fantasy setting?


I think I can help a little with this.
You see, we seem to have a similar style of GMing, so maybe I can give you a bit of insight on how I make it work.

First, I would like to point to the observations I think are most pertinent:

The way you thought the crisis would be solved was too reliant on supernatural forces that are either counter-intuitive or "OP" compared to the party.
This is a really good point. It makes sense that the power of the PCs might not be enough to face an army. But having them enlist creatures above their league as help rubs me the wrong way. Both as a GM and as a player I would have rather given them the chance to enlist help from either creatures of power equal to their own, or numerous creatures weaker than them.
This makes the PCs feel like they are making allies and asking for help from a position of strength and importance, instead of having to beg more powerful entities to help them. The exception could be some sort of construct or creature that is not sentient, because that way the PCs don't feel like they are being protected by an OP character, they feel like they have acquired a new cool toy.

The setup didn't give enough reason to stay and help against this crisis.
I realize this is not the main reason your campaign went badly, but it still deserves some consideration.
From an IC point of view, when faced with impossibile odds, the PCs should have chosen to simply retreat. Avoid a direct confrontation with the enemy army and perhaps go on an adventure to find out a way to stop this at its source. The people of this farming community also seemed to be in no real danger. If the PCs had the time to go and enlist help, surely these people had enough time to pick up their things, any amount of food they had and go take shelter inside the castle of the local lord. Which incidentally tends to be exactly what happened in real life in these kind of scenarios.
Either the army should have been smaller and thus give the PCs the chance to tip the balance of the upcoming battle to their favour, or the village should have been of great strategic importance so that the PCs had a very good reason to keep trying to save it.

These are, in my opinion, the two most pertinent consideration that cropped up in the thread.
About my personal experience in running these kind of games, I'll admit that I treasure OOC communication as the holy grail of running a smooth game. I often talk to my players during the game to make sure I got their intentions right and clarify any doubts or misunderstandings they might have on the situation they are about to get themselves involved with.
This is not done instead of IC communication but rather on top of it: first I let them find out about the issue IC, roleplay their reaction and if they are discussing how to approach the issue at lenght or if I feel that the situation is too complicated and at risk of misunderstandings, I explain everything schematically OOC and I let them pitch a few ideas OOC first so that I can at least say "that might work" or "you don't know, you have to try" or "this is a terribile idea and your character knows it because...*IC explanation follows*".
This compensates for the fact that the PCs often have more time to come up with a plan than the Players do, so OOC stands in for "offscreen" discussions and planning that would be boring or tedious to play in detail. It also allows me to make absolutely sure that they understand everything correctly.
Aside from that, they have all the agency in the world to do as they please, I simply do this to be sure that they make an informed choice when such a thing would be logical or reasonable IC.

TL;DR:
-Don't make your PCs call bigger, more powerful NPCs for help when needed, make them elist the help of equals or lesser beings instead.
-Be sure the setup for the quest is not forced.
-Talk to your players OOC during the session and make sure to clear the air from any misudnerstandings and give them a recap of everything plus some additional clarifications that you feel their characters are entitled to, either because of IC knowledge or time to do research.

Might I ask How people get low level characters involved in big world shaking plots? If using Macguffins or getting help from more powerful characters is inappropriate, I am kind of at a loss as to how low lwevel characters are supposed to participate in non trivial events.

As for your second point, yes, logically the villagers had no reason not to abandon the town save for stubborn refusal to give up what is theirs. The players, though, were trying to prove that they were capable to various people for various reasons, and saving the town was a great way to prove their worth. Any villagers who remained in the village were there because the PCs cnvinced them to remain.

No disagreements whatsoever on your third point.

1of3
2016-01-16, 04:59 AM
If there is no variable difficulty or DM discretion what stops players from doing things that are wildly innapropriate? Like what if someone set out to create a nuclear reactor in a medieval fantasy setting?

There are about 6 - 10 actions in each of these games, called "Moves". Moves are the only things you can roll for. There probably won't be a move about building nuclear reactors in a fantasy game. There might be in a PbtA game about mad inventors. It's a rather different take than what other games do, but it makes sense. Consider: Often you have dozens of numbers of on a character sheet, but you will only ever use a hand full of them. PbtA asks: What are the numbers that will be used in the kind of story we imagine? - Then it makes those basic Moves any one can roll for. Classes then offer special moves.

A basic move might look like this. This one is from Dungeon World (http://www.dungeonworldsrd.com).


Parley

When you have leverage on a GM Character and manipulate them, roll+Cha. Leverage is something they need or want.
✴On a 10+, they do what you ask if you first promise what they ask of you.
✴On a 7–9, they will do what you ask, but need some concrete assurance of your promise, right now.

If you have more questions about that, feel free to ask. Otherwise I don't want to spam your thread.



Might I ask How people get low level characters involved in big world shaking plots?

Not at all, I would say.

JAL_1138
2016-01-16, 06:07 AM
Might I ask How people get low level characters involved in big world shaking plots? If using Macguffins or getting help from more powerful characters is inappropriate, I am kind of at a loss as to how low lwevel characters are supposed to participate in non trivial events.


Plenty of ways. Some of them may involve getting NPCs involved, but not as "go get the ÜberNPC to do the fighting." Just a few:

The setup might not immediately be world-shaking; e.g., starts off with kobold attacks, eventually revealed to be a dragon behind it all, and by that point the players can take it on (or the reveal happens earlier when they can't take on a dragon yet but the plan happens slower, so they can take on the dragon's lieutenants and such and gain levels before taking on the dragon).

Or instead of the entire horde at once, they meet a smaller band of the BBEG's armies, fortify the village, and either fend them off or lose, but now the BBEG will be sending reinforcements (or won and took over the village) and they'll need a new plan, etc.

Or their mission might not be "defeat the army singlehandedly" but be on a smaller scale--sabotage the supply lines, or break the dam and flood the enemy camp, take out the necromancer himself rather than meeting his skeleton horde on the battlefield, deliver vital intel about troop movements or enemy weaknesses, fortify the town and hold off the enemy until the allied army arrives, etc.

Or over the course of the campaign, as the campaign, persuade many allies to band together and form a huge army (e.g., get Baron Bob, Archbishop Alice, Duke Dave, Earl Eric, Viscountess Violet, and the like to pledge their support to the Queen, then either break out the mass-combat rules with the PCs as generals, or have the PCs seek out the enemy leader while the armies battle on the field, or something. EDIT: The PCs are less politically-powerful than these NPCs, but are probably better in a fight individually; and in either outcome, the PCs have something big to do--either direct the battle, or fight the boss. They don't cast "Summon Bigger Fish" and hang back while the Bigger Fish does the work for them.

Or the threat may be world-shaking, but the enemies bringing it about aren't--e.g., cultists trying to summon Azathoth. If they succeed, the world goes foom: Azathoth falls, everone dies--but the cultists themselves aren't superpowered badasses, or an unstoppable horde; they're foes the PCs can take on and stop before that happens.

(Couple of these are more linear than I'd like and aren't explained as well as I'd like to, but I'm typing on a cell phone and haven't had coffee yet, so they'll do for now.)

Also consider scaling back. Not everything has to be world-shaking. City/city-state, country, region, etc. are also valid scales of threat for "non trivial" events. Saving the city from the dragon or the country from the necromancer is non-trivial, but not quite so massive an undertaking for the characters or for you as a DM.

Kalmageddon
2016-01-16, 07:11 AM
Might I ask How people get low level characters involved in big world shaking plots? If using Macguffins or getting help from more powerful characters is inappropriate, I am kind of at a loss as to how low lwevel characters are supposed to participate in non trivial events.

Numbers still matter, don't they?
In the situation at hand, the PCs could have enlisted the help of numerous creatures of lower level rather than a few high level ones and still make a difference.
Like for example, convice a mercenary band to come and help the village against the invaders. The mercenaries themselves might be made of low level NPCs and their boss might be at most on the same level as the PCs, but if they manage to get a 1000 trained warriors to come and fortify the village, nobody's suspension of disbelief will be broken if it makes a difference, even if by strict rules it might not matter as much.
But, if you still don't like this idea, consider having them enlist nonsentient forces instead. Ancient weapons and constructs, beasts and so on. Same amount of epic without making the Players feel like they are handing the quest to a more powerful NPC.

I once did exactly that:
The PCs were exploring the tomb of an ancient king when they found out that a small army of abberrations was coming their way (Moria style) and they had a limited amount of time to reactivate an ancient golem (Huge Stone Golem, leagues above their power level at the time) to help repel the enemy, all while fighting the vanguard in waves of progressively stronger enemies.
It was dramatic, intense, fun and nobody complained when the stone golem nailed a beholder to the wall through its eye, thus winning the battle for them, because they felt like they earned the help of such a powerful creature.

neonchameleon
2016-01-16, 07:46 AM
If there is no variable difficulty or DM discretion what stops players from doing things that are wildly innapropriate? Like what if someone set out to create a nuclear reactor in a medieval fantasy setting?

First there are no more rules to do that than there is a nuclear physics skill in D&D (almost everything covers what you do in the moment), second the word "seriously?", and third it just doesn't happen (and even if they set out to do that it's a campaign goal and an awesome one rather than a problem)


Might I ask How people get low level characters involved in big world shaking plots? If using Macguffins or getting help from more powerful characters is inappropriate, I am kind of at a loss as to how low lwevel characters are supposed to participate in non trivial events.

By being in the wrong place at the wrong time. After three successful rounds against the Cult of Orcus when others have failed to even spot them the PCs are possibly the good guy experts on their current methods. The people who stopped the assassin earned a seat at the table. But generally world shaking plots are overdone and used for cheap drama while they take the focus off the PCs

NichG
2016-01-16, 09:54 AM
Might I ask How people get low level characters involved in big world shaking plots? If using Macguffins or getting help from more powerful characters is inappropriate, I am kind of at a loss as to how low lwevel characters are supposed to participate in non trivial events.


There are lots of things which are level-independent. For example, information and access - knowledge that will provoke action and access to the people they might want to provoke. The trickier thing is to make this feel empowering.

Your basic idea was not unworkable. 'The PCs are the only ones who know about the ancient powers that the land holds'. That's information and access, right there. However, the players had no reason to see that as their power yet, so it felt untrustworthy and like they didn't do things themselves.

It helps to give it an explicit gimmick, that puts explicit control in the players hands. The PCs have an ancient document that was used in the ancient empire to compel military aid. This document gives the bearer power over beings that lived in this area during that time - maybe limited to a single instance.

First let the PCs accumulate a collection of these creatures bound under pact, before you introduce a situation where they're mandatory. Let the PCs feel that deploying one such pact is a clever thing they can initiate to accomplish the difficult or pull off one of their own schemes. Once the PCs are comfortable with this gimmick power, you can start to make it necessary and to push the PCs beyond their level.

John Longarrow
2016-01-16, 10:01 AM
If there is no variable difficulty or DM discretion what stops players from doing things that are wildly innapropriate? Like what if someone set out to create a nuclear reactor in a medieval fantasy setting?

This is often done by asking questions that make your players think. "Nuclear reactor? does your character have knowledge that would allow them to picture such a thing?" is the kind of initial question. Most players will either use a totally out of character argument that can be addressed as 'Player knowledge VS character knowledge' or will ask how, in game, they can work on it.

Once the players start thinking inside the framework of the game, you don't get this kind of question. Same with players trying to whip up black powder based on out of character knowledge. Most often, the players that try this don't build a character who could actually pull it off. Likewise in game you could simply not have certain real world attributes apply. Making uranium non-radioactive would have no in game effect that the characters would notice.

It is also the kind of question that would be posed by a player who doesn't enjoy the game and is trying to break it in a way that lets them play their style of game instead.

Segev
2016-01-16, 10:47 AM
Might I ask How people get low level characters involved in big world shaking plots? If using Macguffins or getting help from more powerful characters is inappropriate, I am kind of at a loss as to how low lwevel characters are supposed to participate in non trivial events.

Again, presenting the mission as "get some help" from the get-go would be one way. It's less that getting the more powerful character was inappropriate at all, and more that it seems to have been at odds with the PRESENTED challenge of "defend the town." So "go get help" felt like a cop-out, like the NPC solved it for them. Present "go get help" as the mission itself, emphasizing the danger and why a team of adventurers is needed to do this, and the PCs become involved exactly as you'd intended without feeling like the NPC solved the module for them. "Get the NPC" was the mission for them, and they faced challenges to do so, and overcame them.


Another way to do it is to let them fail. As long as the party isn't wiped out to the last man, the campaign can go on. As DM, you can leave them a path to retreat that they can take at any time. In fact, that's another way to shift the mission paramters: once the siege of the town starts, the PCs want to win...so let them try. But if they decide they can't, then their mission becomes "survive." How they do that is up to them. But the most straight-forward way would be to treat the escape from the army as almost a dungeon crawl, with encounters with various units that they have to beat or get around without drawing down more on themselves in order to break through the lines. Or, if they prefer to surrender, you can make that still be an option, thanks to that ally who wants "as little bloodshed as possible."

Don't tell them, "You can't win." Let them try, and let them see what happens as it unfolds.

If they try their best, and they make some major blows against the enemy but still can't win, that will motivate them to want to get stronger to take back their town and/or get revenge. They'll get themselves involved.

Beleriphon
2016-01-16, 11:41 AM
Second, let me ask a questions: how do you introduce a major villain early on in the campaign? One who is meant to be a credible threat and a recurring antagonist, but without being so distant and inactive they become like Orcus on his throne or without making them look so incompetent they become a joke like most 80s Saturday morning cartoon villains?

By making the threat something other than a physical threat, or making the immediate threat something that is only the lackey of the real BBEG. The other option is to go the Star Wars route. Luke Skywalker doesn't fight Darth Vader, in fact he only sees him once in person in the entire first movie. But the audience knows full well that Darth Vader is a bad mother who shouldn't be messed with.


Finally, let me ask how the following scenario would go over: The players are in a city that is under seige by a superior force. They are tasked with delivering a message to a nearby kingdom to beg for them to send their army and break the sage. The players are their kingdoms only hope, and they must slip past the besieging army and cross the monster infested wilderness to deliver the vital message before it is too late.

It is basically the same set up, but with a lot more telegraphing, and the players have about the same amount of impact, but I imagine it would go over a lot better. Why?

The difference is that the scenario isn't stop the siege, its run away and get help to stop the siege. The scenario up front is outlined that the players can't stop the army because its a huge army laying siege to a city. That has a very different scenario than what you described up front for what the adventure you did run was. I know you're looking at the same, but there's a difference between the descriptions.

Kardwill
2016-01-17, 02:08 AM
If there is no variable difficulty or DM discretion what stops players from doing things that are wildly innapropriate? Like what if someone set out to create a nuclear reactor in a medieval fantasy setting?

The same way you react when at D&D, a player says "my dwarf grows pink fluffy wings and flies over the wall". You tell them "No, don't be silly". I would certainly not give them a huge DC as a counter for such an outrageous acton, as it would validate their delirium and encourage them to try other unreasonable stuff until I break.

If I ask my players to roll the dice, it's because I accept the idea that they could succeed or fail, and I am prepared to face the consequences of both. Otherwise, I simply say "yes" or "no"

I'm a huge supporter of "unless you have a really good reason not to, say yes to your players' suggestions", but that doesn't mean I would allow them to be jerks about it.

Arbane
2016-01-17, 03:41 AM
The same way you react when at D&D, a player says "my dwarf grows pink fluffy wings and flies over the wall". You tell them "No, don't be silly". I would certainly not give them a huge DC as a counter for such an outrageous acton, as it would validate their delirium and encourage them to try other unreasonable stuff until I break.


Plus, they might roll a 20.

Seconding the recommendation for Dungeon World - it's a good example of Apocalypse design, and it's intended to do D&D-style adventuring. (I got to play it a while back, and had fun.)

Segev
2016-01-17, 04:04 PM
Yeah, what prevents your PCs from inventing various forms of anachronistic technology is the same thing that prevents their players from inventing technology that hasn't yet been invented in the real world: the PCs don't know how.

Don't even let them roll "appropriate knowledges" or the like; these things are not known well enough to develop them, and have no place in your setting. So if the PCs want to, say, "invent" gunpowder, and they do it by saying, "well, my character grinds up charcoal, brimstone, and saltpeter into a mixture, and lights it," you are perfectly within your rights to ask him why he's doing it, and even refuse to allow him to because he'd have no reason to. Just like there comes a point when it becomes painfully obvious that a DM is railroading, there comes a point where it becomes painfully obvious that a player is abusing meta-knowledge to "coincidentally" achieve things in the game.

This is also a point where you can invoke mechanics: they didn't make a Craft roll to make gunpowder, so they didn't succeed. Or, if gunpowder isn't even a thing in your system, they didn't make anything at all because it doesn't exist to be made. And you're well within your rights to forbid it on the grounds that it's anachronistic and unsuited for the setting, and besides your barbarian doesn't have that kind of knowledge anyway.

Talakeal
2016-01-17, 05:44 PM
Ok, finally got to my keyboard. First let me respond to a few individual points which I have been meaning to get to:



Yeah, with a side order of "the DM's awesome magic macguffin beats the DM's invincible foe (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2109)"

Ok, so I read the linked article. Was there something more I was supposed to take away from it besides the quote, because there are a LOT of things going wrong with the adventure he is describing which are obviously terrible ideas to me and don't seem to reflect on my situation.





Also do not shut down players Ideas just because you did not think of them. That cannot be said often enough.

This is very good advice, and a lesson I learned long ago. I can honestly say this didn't happen here. The players didn't come up with truly out of the box ideas that I didn't think of, they instead came up with very in the box ideas that I already had solid reasons why they wouldn't work; and if they had it would have made the PCs more or less redundant and would have made for a mundane adventure where the PCs are superfluous.




What this boatman says.

Puzzle-like situations in RPG's are hard. There are a lot of pieces on the board and the players rarely have a good overview of all of them. They usually miss even pretty major things about the world. Like how griffons are like falcons, not flying horses. That's not a bad thing, but it does add to the difficulty of figuring out how to use this environment to win.

In fact, the griffon situation as a whole is probably a good example. You give the players the hint that they should go check out this dude in his hunting lodge. All he can give them is the reason that he's not helping (to be fair, you planned for them being able to convince him with better dice rolls, but they don't know that). They look around if there's some way in which they could use that information, or if there's something else here they can use. After all, you gave them the hint to go look. They see the griffons. First it turns out that you're using the term griffon to mean something completely different from what they're imagining, but they're still dangerous creatures that might be able to help. But their attempts to get them to help are pretty much preemptively shot down.

And that's the point where you could have thrown them a bone. Let them talk the guy into sending these animals with them, or let them lure them with food, let them find a stable hand in the village who can help them win the animals' trust. Or just let the gryphons fly up in fear as a large dark shape flies over towards those dark caves a little further on.

Because that's another example. It's not enough to have a dragon, the PC's need to be able to find out there is one without going looking for it. This problem does not immediately scream "maybe a dragon lives nearby who can help us". (How clear were the rumors? Did they scream "hint, hint"?) .

The griffons were not completely different than I was imagining them; I simply use a set of flying rules that states that creatures must be at least two size categories larger than their rider to take flight while mounted. They were still lion sized creatures with the heads and wings of eagles.

Heck, even going by D&D rules, to ride a griffon you need:

To make it friendly with a diplomacy check.
Roll a DC 25 handle animal check.
Spend between six weeks and three years training the griffon.
By a specially made exotic saddle.
Make a ride test to do anything while mounted.

And even then Griffons will only ever accept a single rider and will kill anyone else who tries, so these would have had to have been domestic griffons that no one had ever tried taming before.



Also, I absolutely was open ideas about using the griffons in some other manner; in fact the players apparently had something in mind, as they convinced the griffon's handler to leave the stable unlocked and go fishing on the third day, but never actually did anything with it.


As for the dragon, it wasn't crystal clear. The players just asked for local rumors that might be relevant, and I gave them a list. The players scoffed at the notion of a dragon living nearby and dismissed in. In truth the "dragon" was not actually a true dragon but rather a river spirit with a tremendous knowledge of the region who could have given the players a lot more information on the situation and their enemy, but that didn't happen so it's neither here nor there.



They have to make some pretty big mental leaps to conclude that maybe yesterdays ghost would be powerful enough to beat today's challenge, even though they won yesterday and today they're being warned they can't win this. If you have to make it as unsubtle as NPC's almost literally pointing them towards solutions, so be it. The session becomes legendry if they figure the perfect solution out completely unprovoked, but it's no fun at all as long when they don't figure anything out. Things happening that push them in the right direction are way better than 2 OOC hours of doing nothing.

This is very good advice, and this alone makes the whole thread worth it. Thank you.

Also, for the record, the ghosts were not hostile to the players. There was no way the players would have "won" if they had tried actually fighting the ghosts, but neither they nor I ever considered that combat to be a real possibility.



(My initial reaction before reading was going to be "you went wrong by playing in Bizarro Gaming World, as usual", but the players are honestly coming across as pretty reasonable this time.)

Now, for constructive advice...learn from this. You now know how your players think, what they expect and what they like. Prepare for that. You'll do better in Round 2.

Yeah, that was my initial impression of the story. Hence the thread title.

Although, now that I have had a few days to ponder the situation and talk to my players, in retrospect I can't help but feel they were being a bit petulant and over-reactive.

Player A seems to want to be playing a super hero right out of the box at level 1 and also went on a long rant about how I should be using minions rather than standard HP for enemies because it doesn't feel heroic enough if he can't reliably one shot enemies.

Player feels that he has had 10-15 minutes of his time wasted, and instead of speaking up he instead passive aggressively decides to ruin the remaining 3-4 hours of gaming for himself and everyone else.

and Player C wanted to simply run away from every single threat and abandon the adventure. Talking to the other players, they were actually a lot more frustrated with him than I was.



Don't, I say again, DON'T Plan ahead. Create the basic scenario, then organically develop it, it'll be more difficult, but if this is your problem, then the answer is to force yourself out of the mindset that only one solution will work, create a problem that you don't know the solution to. Then if the players come up with something that won't work, talk to them until they figure out a way to make that solution work. After all a fireball may not work on a Red Dragon, but a Ball of Cold might. Throwing a stick at it won't, but shooting a sharpened black one through its weak point would. Finger of Death is unreachable to 2nd level mages, unless they have a scroll., So they quest to find said scroll. Even a person with a Charisma of 6 can make a compelling argument if the argument is a bribe, or a sufficiently interesting threat. A person with low charisma could still figure out what the Dragon wants and bribe them.

This is good advice. Unfortunately, it rarely works. My players are terrible at taking initiative, and I have a very active brain that can't help but spend the long drive to the gaming session thinking about the adventure and how it might play out. But yeah, communication is key.


Honestly? I'd let them try. Maybe they have a cunning plan to steal a scroll of PW: Kill from the local mages' guild, maybe the stick is made of a highly acidic substance (...they also stole really tough gloves when raiding the mages guild), maybe they have the cash to buy a potion of glibness. Or maybe they fail and die, I don't actually know until they try. Maybe they get a massive critical with a bulk-standard twig.

Again, those are all plausible scenarios with the players taking extraordinary actions to make them work. My players simply expected spending 10-15 minutes setting up a few improvised booby traps and a handful of animated objects would allow a couple dozen semi trained fighters to take on a force fifty times their size.

Honestly, when the players set the traps I thought they were simply creating fallback options to slow down and weaken the enemies if they failed to stop them rather than hoping to wipe out the entire hoard itself. At no point did I ever say "No you can't do that," instead I said something along the lines of "Ok, that's a start, what next," and it wasn't until they told me that there was no "Next" that I said that they haven't done nearly enough yet and by themselves their defenses won't hold.


So you never thought the party may try to gank the leader? That's the first thing several groups I know would try. Take out the leader early then see if you can get rid of the rest. Evil hordes tend to fall apart quickly without firm leadership.

It also makes a very big statement about your style of play. You had it in your mind before the players showed up that nothing the characters do can directly affect the outcome. There are very few times a DM should bring out this kind of action. For the most part this screams 'plot requirement' and the players should have a LOT of foreshadowing it will occur. If you had been seeding the party with information about all of the big guys they could call on for several sessions plus gave them a solid reason why they are the ones to choose the towns savior, this could be workable. From the sounds of it the players had no clue their direct actions would be useless.

As DM though, how would you have handled the party trying to sneak in and assassinate the head of the horde? What would you have done to either help or hinder the party? What would have been the fallout from their leader being killed? If the players had a solid enough plan, they may have been able to get help from either the King or the local lord's estate. An attack by griffons in the evening as cover while the party (helped by the kings head of espionage) should be a workable plan. One the religious leader is out of the picture, who's next in charge? Are they also on the holy crusade? If it won't work, how can you make sure the player find this out without wasting a day trying?

Also, just so everyone is actually clear on what you had planned, how big was the town, how many defenders could it actually muster, how big was the attacking force, and what special resources did it have?

From the players perspective how much of the above was known/knowable?

These are not questions I actually have much need to know. As DM, they are questions you should be able to answer quickly. Working through what your players may need and figuring out how you want to give it to them should hopefully aid you immensely in avoiding this issue.

I don't think the players could have defeated the leader in a straight fight, but I wouldn't go out of my way to stop them if they tried. That would probably have ended the immediate threat without putting a kink in the campaign, but again it would have required an extraordinary plan on the part of the players as well as good luck, and I don't think anyone (myself included) wanted to risk a TPK playing chicken with the dice like that.


If a player suggests a stupid idea to you, your default response should be to find a way to allow it, not shut it down. If a player's idea seems stupid to you, subtly change the idea, don't simply shut the player down. For example, if a player wants to ride hunting griffons to fight the bandits, but you REALLY insist on them being too small, you could say "well, you can't ride them, but perhaps you can train them to claw and peck at the raiders, distracting them during your fight."

Would you really rewrite the monster manual just to accommodate a player's plans? If, say, a player got it in their head that unicorns could grant wishes or that ogres were really kind and huggable and not evil at all because of a children's book they once read, would you actually give them that ability and not only rewrite the unicorn's abilities but also its role in the world?

Again, this seems like it goes deep into the realm of narrative gaming and just isn't for me.

Also, yeah, the players absolutely COULD have trained the griffons to fight for them, but they had absolutely no skills when it came to animals, in fact two of the party members had a character trait that wild animals actually attack them on sight unless restrained. When asked I told the players that they are free to try, but the only likely outcome would be a blood bath which they can't afford on the eve of battle.


The thing about those lord of the rings battles, is that the Heroes still contribute.


As my friends are fond of saying, there are two steps to every plan.

Step 1: Don't lose.

Step 2: Win.

At Helms Deep, the defenders had to hold out until reinforcements arrived. Just because they didn't win by personally killing every Uruk-Hai does not mean they did not win. Just because the Battle was finally won by the reinforcements does not mean that their skills were not necessary to win the battle. Yes, Gandalf and the Rohiram WON the battle, but Aragon, Gimili, Legolas, and the other defenders were still crucial to the victory, and the narrative is framed to make the defenders look Heroic ,rather than just following Gandalf and the Riders.



But, back to you.

No, you are not obligated to accept any plan the PC's make, BUT, you ARE Obligated to have solid reasoning why a plan would not work. Especially in conjunction with other plans.




Let's unpack all the plans you rejected.

1) Convincing the Townsfolk to fight, Seven-Samurai Style.

2) Booby Trapping the Town, Home-Alone Style.

3) Animating Objects to defend the town, reinforcing the Townsfolk.

4) Sending a Runner to the King for assistance.

5) Sabotaging the Enemy Army

6) Negotiating with the Enemy Leader

7) Getting Griffon air support. Either by stealing the Griffons or convincing the Lord.

Let's break this down.

1), 2, 3, and 5 all work together. Individually, none of them would be enough, but combining the ideas could have been enough.

Sending a Runner to the King, this one I'm okay with, the King does not necessarily need to risk troops. That said, if they had told the King about the BBEG's Famine Plan, then maybe they could have convinced him. Still, that's okay.

Same with negotiating with the enemy, villains are not required to be sympathetic.


The Lord, however. You knew that the party lacked social skills and animal handling skills, and yet you OOC encouraged them to spend their valuable time and what you knew to be a dead end. If the party is unlikely to get any benefit from something, why are you encouraging them to go do it?


You rejected all these plans, instead you pressured them towards one of the plans you had "Anticipated". All of which took the form "There is something big that can win the battle for you, go get that thing".

So, imagine splitting everything into "Ordinary" Solutions, and "Extraordinary" solutions.

The Base scenario is as follows:


The Ordinary Solutions are solutions that flow naturally from that scenario, and the PC's abilities.
Things like, using Magic to enhance the defenses, encouraging the lord or townsfolk to fight, booby trapping the town, Sabotaging the enemy army, etc. All those are Ordinary Solutions. They are things one automatically assumes can be done given the scenario above. Most importantly, The Ordinary solutions all originated FROM THE PLAYERS. You didn't need to explicitly say that the town could be booby trapped, that's assumed because Towns can be trapped and fortified.

Now, You presented three Extraordinary Solutions. The Dragon, the Lich, and the Ghosts. These did NOT stem from the scenario above, they were placed into the setting, and each of them represented a source of power well beyond the PC's themselves. If you ask "How do I defend this village!", you don't automatically assume "Well, there's a dragon nearby who can help".


Now, when you prepared the scenario, you came up with three "Acceptable" Solutions, all of which were Extraordinary Solutions. You planted rumors that the Bronze Dragon existed. You decided that it was possible to compel the Lich. You decided it was possible to compel the ghosts. The PC's can't assume those things the same way they can assume that one can fortify a town, or burn enemy tents.


Which brings us back to your statement.


That's what you thought you did. In reality, you didn't "Let the PC's come up with their own plan", nor did you come up with the more "Likely" Scenarios.

You, in your position as the GM, came up with three ideas that you decided would work, Knowing that, as the GM, You could MAKE them work. It's not a given that the PC's had the power to compel the ghosts, for example, but you decided that if they tried, you would let them do it
.
The only Ordinary solution you provided was also the one you deemed the Hardest, convincing the lord to help.

The key to running a Sandbox scenario is that the problem needs to be within the realm of "Ordinary" Solutions. If all the acceptable solutions are Extraordinary, then it's not a sandbox, because you cannot expect the PC's to organically come up with an Extraordinary solution.


Think about it like this.

There is a cabin in the woods. The door is locked, but the PC's must get inside.
The following are "Ordinary" Solutions
1) Picking the lock. (Comes from the PC's skills, and the nature of the situation, specifically a locked door)
2) Breaking down the door. (PC's Skills and the nature of the situation)
3) Climbing a tree, getting onto the roof of the cabin, and going down the chimney. (Nature of the situation, cabin in the woods).
4) Tunneling under the cabin and coming up through the floor. (Nature of the situation)
5) Peering in the window, then using some sort of telekinesis to unlock the door from the inside (PC's Skills and the nature of the situation)

The Extraordinary solution is finding the key.

Sure, Finding the Key works. But the situation as described (A cabin in the woods with a locked door), does nothing to tell the PC's that there might be a key hidden nearby. That solution does not grow organically out of the situation unless you already know that there is a hidden key. You might suspect that there is a hidden key, but you don't have any evidence that is true, it's just a thing that could possible happen.

Compare that to picking the lock. You can safely ASSUME that the lock can be picked, because most locks can be picked. You cannot safely assume that every locked door has a hidden key nearby.

You hid a few keys, and decided that you would be okay if they found another key you hadn't realized was there.


All three are Correct from a certain point of view.
Player A feels helpless, because the solutions you presented all took the power out of the PC's hands. The players don't even get to feel clever for coming up with the idea, since you fed the plan to them OOC. Their characters didn't do anything awesome, and the players didn't get to do anything awesome.

Player B Feels frustrated because, from his perspective, you were just letting them twiddle their thumbs until they stumbled upon one of the solutions you had already deemed acceptable. From your perspective, there were several solutions, plus any others they came up with that you deemed reasonable. They didn't come up with any other acceptable solutions, so from their perspective the only acceptable solutions were the ones you had come up with. The fact that a solution COULD exist does not necessarily make that solution viable.

Player C Feels constrained. Player B would have been okay with being railroaded, but player C wanted freedom, but, for reasons I describe above, he didn't feel like he had it. He felt like he was stumbling around waiting to pick one of your solutions.

Remember, it's not about finding the solution that makes them win. It's about them increasing their chances of victory.

Very useful post. I am not sure I like the implication that every problem needs to have an ordinary solution, but pointing out the division between ordinary and extraordinary is very insightful and not something I had thought about before. Thank you very much for taking the time to write this.



I feel like I should clarify something.

The lesson to take away from this isn't that the overwhelming horde that frightens the King's armies should be defeatable by a band of rag-tag peasants. The lesson is that you should carefully manage the scale of the threat, if you truly want to run a sandbox or other "Open" scenario.

The issue is the scale of the threat. If you are letting the PC's make their own plans, rather than feeding them a macguffin, then the threat should be one they can handle without the aid of a macguffin.

If you're feeding them a Macguffin, then the threat can be far beyond their capabilities, because their Quest is NOT to defeat the threat, it's to get the Macguffin, and getting the Macguffin is within their capabilities.


The issue is, you framed their mission as "Defeat the Horde", put Defeating the Horde outside their abilities, and instead hid some Macguffins.

If you truly wanted to run a sandbox game, then the Horde should have been beatable without the aid of Macguffins.

When preparing a challenge, you have to consider what is the PC's Actual Goal. As in, what are they actually going to do, vs. their Abstract goal.

To use LOTR as an example.
The Abstract Goal is to Defeat Sauron. The Actual Goal is to cast the ring into the fires of Mount Doom. Once that happens, they win, and the Abstract Goal happens anyway.

Sam and Frodo couldn't defeat Sauron. They're not great warriors, if he's even vulnerable to blades. However, their Immediate Goal, cast the ring into the fires of Mount Doom, was attainable.

You Presented them with an Abstract Goal (Defeat the evil army) that was beyond the capabilities you were willing to give them. You ran the session with the Immediate Goal of "Find somebody else to defeat the evil army", which WAS Attainable, but they didn't know it. If you want to run a sandbox game, The Abstract Goal should theoretically be directly attainable, and the PC's actions and decisions increase or decrease their chance of success.

I have no desire to run a true sandbox. Those always go horribly for my group.

But yeah, I suppose the problem was one of communication. The goal I had in mind was find a macguffin, while the players thought it was defend the town.


Quick question: Talakeal, would you say you'd been playing under railroady DMs for quite a while?

You know, I never really thought about it before. I have certainly never FELT railroaded, but then again I have never really tried to go completely off the rails before either. Heck, normally the party polices its own, if one person wants to run off on their own and do something crazy the other party members refuse to go along with it and then the DM tells the lone wolf that he is not going to run a solo session and that the PC needs to either sit out or make a new character.



2) Go to a haunted grove. Why? They don't know there's anything there.
3) "Somehow" use magic to command some ghosts. If a party of E6 characters can command a group of undead, it's pretty clear the undead aren't going to beat an army. Besides, ghosts typically can't move from their burial place.

Why would it end? The BBEG still has a famine to create. The PCs could still oppose him. In fact, they'd have a good reason to. That jerk destroyed their village!

Well, they encountered the haunted grove earlier when they were just wandering around looking for adventure, but they decided it was too scary and didn't enter (and I didn't force them to go in). The grove would have started the trail of bread crumbs that led them to the druid himself. There were still plenty of other clues (at least 3) that there was a powerful druid somewhere in the region, but they didn't choose to look into them and try and track the druid down.

Also, the party sorceress certainly could have found a way to communicate with or command the ghosts. I don't want to go into mechanics or specific details, but it was a possibility. Heck, she could have potentially used the exact same ritual the lich did. Also, the party knew that the ghosts could leave as they actually did manage to redeem one of the ghosts and saw him leave, and there were rumors of the ghosts attacking nearby settlements in ancient times.


Yeah, leaving the village to its fate wouldn't have ended the campaign, but it would have left the rest of the session unscripted and "off the rails" as it were, with no clear direction. Also, only one player wanted to leave, the other two were completely unwilling to abandon their home, and specifically told me that they would die in a futile attempt to single handedly defend the town if it came down to it.



In improv terms what you are describing yourself as doing is called "wimping (http://improvencyclopedia.org/glossary/Wimping.html)" (saying no would be "blocking") - although technically saying yes, you were also saying that it was pointless and not actually doing anything with what you were supposedly accepting. It's a slightly subtler trap than just saying no - "no" brings the scene to a screeching halt while wimping just turns the scene into a pointless waste of time exactly the way you have described your game going.

Oh, indeed. Basic railroading is saying "You can't do anything except what I the DM wish you to do". It's obvious and straightforward. You managed to pull a subtler twist on it "You can do what you want - but unless it's one of the three things I the DM want you to do it isn't going to do any good; all it's going to do is waste everyone's time. Oh, and I'm going to hide the tracks and signposts."


Again, this might work in a narrative game where the plot shifts to match the players preconceptions, but this isn't that kind of game. If, for example, I am running a murder mystery and have decided that the Butler did it, and the players are absolutely convinced the uninvolved neighbor did it, and the players spend all their time staking out the neighbors house, I am not "blocking" them when they don't find clues, I am just following the scenario I have laid out. Now I COULD throw them a bone and change the plot around so that the neighbor was involved, but that requires me to go out of my way to change up everything, and not all players are for that kind of thing.


Another thing to keep in mind is that if the situation is too "easy" or "simple", it creates holes in the narrative. Tossing aside meta-game concepts like challenge for a moment, you might still have to say "No" to preserve verisimilitude. For example, right now I am designing an encounter for a weird west style game where a thunder bird is eating local livestock and the players are asked to kill it. I need to make it difficult to kill and to reach so that the villagers actually need to hire the players to do it rather than just doing it themselves, and part of the strategy is by making it too large to be affected by most poison, only leave its lair at night, live in an area which is inaccessible to horses, and it living in a cave which cannot be blocked off, surrounded, sniped, or blown up with dynamite.
Now, these things might serve to say "No" to some of the players plans, but that isn't their purpose, their purpose is to make it so that the players need to do or to be something extraordinary to be called in the first place and be considered heroes when they succeed; if this wasn't the case the NPCs would have just taken care of the problem themselves.



I hope that you remember your words, so that you walk away if you ever are invited to play systems like Fate, HeroQuest 2nd Edition, Mutants and Masterminds, Valiant Universe, The burning wheel and many new systems that share the same philosophy.

Not every RPG system is meant to simulate a world, there are systems that respond and revolve around telling stories and using mechanics to attend dramatic needs, not to create a "Matrix". Not that there is something wrong with simulation RPGs, but it’s pretentious to think that outside that everything that is left is comedy.

OK...? Yes, I will remember my preferences when I am asked to do something that goes against my preferences, just like I remember that I don't like chili when placing an order at a restraint so that I don't accidently order the chili I know I won't like.

On a broader note, I played FATE once, and it was by far the most miserable experience of my entire gaming career, and I don't want to do anything like it again. However, I am willing to accept that it might be a fluke and might give the system or a similar one a try, if for nothing other than to expand my horizons, however it would need to be with a good group whom I trusted and who were willing to let me ease myself into it.

Also, I actually played a little Mutants and Masterminds, and it didn't seem to be an overly narrativist system. Aside from a few RP mechanics like your weaknesses it seemed to be a pretty straightforward problem solving game where the rules did not preclude the possibility of failure.


But yeah, you could also probably stand to consume some games that use that "style of game you would never want to run or play in" because frankly, it doesn't sound like you have the faintest idea what it entails.

Broadening my horizons is always a good thing, and as I said I would be willing to try if I could find the right group. But to humor me, would you mind actually saying what I am misinterpreting rather than just tossing of a vague insult and being done with it?


And do you not see a problem with this? I mean, not only is this an obvious, logical choice on the part of the party, but even if it weren't, if you're trying to run a remotely freeform game, you need to be able to deal with the player's saying "screw it, we're not going to deal with this."



One thing you should take away from this is ALWAYS plan for when the players don't want to follow your planned adventure. I've had a time where I had 6 different adventure paths lined up. All of them were provided as hooks for the characters, all of them had their first 3 sessions fleshed out and ready to roll. Players didn't bite on any of them. I basically stopped the session, talked to the players about what they wanted to play and which way they wanted the game to go, and called it a night. Never feel like you have to run on a given night. Never feel like you can't stop a session to find out what the players want. Never feel like you have to spend a minimum amount of time behind the screen.

It would be far better to have two hour sessions once a week where everyone is enjoying the game than weekend marathons that the players don't enjoy because 'Its all I had prepared'.

To me this almost goes beyond asking the DM to accommodate you and into the realm of taking advantage of the DM. Even if I don't like an adventure, I can still have fun going along with it. If it is a recurring problem I may talk to the DM or even leave the campaign, but actually refusing to go on whatever adventure the DM has planned strikes me as unspeakably rude, and I can't believe you think it's ok that you put the effort into making six full adventure paths all for nothing. I don't know about you, but I normally spend 2-3 times the length of the actual session on prep-work.

I have played a lot of games over the years on both sides of the screen, and I have never even considered just ditching the adventure entirely nor can I recall having seen another player do so.



The setup didn't give enough reason to stay and help against this crisis.
I realize this is not the main reason your campaign went badly, but it still deserves some consideration.
From an IC point of view, when faced with impossible odds, the PCs should have chosen to simply retreat. Avoid a direct confrontation with the enemy army and perhaps go on an adventure to find out a way to stop this at its source. The people of this farming community also seemed to be in no real danger. If the PCs had the time to go and enlist help, surely these people had enough time to pick up their things, any amount of food they had and go take shelter inside the castle of the local lord. Which incidentally tends to be exactly what happened in real life in these kind of scenarios.
Either the army should have been smaller and thus give the PCs the chance to tip the balance of the upcoming battle to their favor, or the village should have been of great strategic importance so that the PCs had a very good reason to keep trying to save it.


Yeah, this is what the NPCs said. They were going to hide in the castle and rebuild. The players were never in any personal danger, but they wanted to save the village and prove themselves, and so they decided to find a way.



There are about 6 - 10 actions in each of these games, called "Moves". Moves are the only things you can roll for. There probably won't be a move about building nuclear reactors in a fantasy game. There might be in a PbtA game about mad inventors. It's a rather different take than what other games do, but it makes sense. Consider: Often you have dozens of numbers of on a character sheet, but you will only ever use a hand full of them. PbtA asks: What are the numbers that will be used in the kind of story we imagine? - Then it makes those basic Moves any one can roll for. Classes then offer special moves.

A basic move might look like this. This one is from Dungeon World (http://www.dungeonworldsrd.com).
.

Ok, I am still not understanding.

If there are only 6-10 possible actions, doesn't that limit player agency far more than the DM ever could? Even if the DM says "No" to 90% of my ideas, that still leaves me with a heck of a lot more than 6-10 options.

If everyone has an equal chance of succeeding, doesn't that make the players choices meaningless? For example, the player who is playing the silver tongued diplomat and the bumbling antisocial jerk are equally persuasive, and the player who goes the extra mile of putting together a compelling argument is no better off than the guy who just shouts "DO WHAT I SAY OR ELSE!"

Also, who decides what leverage is sufficient and what actions are too extreme? What would stop someone from, say, convincing the villain to simply surrender outright because otherwise the players will fight back? Or going to even more ludicrous extremes, offering the villain a gold piece if he will kill himself?

I am legitimately curious as to how the game handles these. I am sure there are explanations for most of them, I just can't see them; I am not simply trying to "win the argument" by poking holes in the game system, although I think I probably come across that way.


Not at all, I would say.

That's unfortunate. That is a HUGE staple of fantasy fiction (as well as video games and published adventure paths), and it seems a huge shame that RPGs are unable to handle one of the cornerstones of the genre.


Numbers still matter, don't they?
In the situation at hand, the PCs could have enlisted the help of numerous creatures of lower level rather than a few high level ones and still make a difference.
Like for example, convince a mercenary band to come and help the village against the invaders. The mercenaries themselves might be made of low level NPCs and their boss might be at most on the same level as the PCs, but if they manage to get a 1000 trained warriors to come and fortify the village, nobody's suspension of disbelief will be broken if it makes a difference, even if by strict rules it might not matter as much.
But, if you still don't like this idea, consider having them enlist non-sentient forces instead. Ancient weapons and constructs, beasts and so on. Same amount of epic without making the Players feel like they are handing the quest to a more powerful NPC.

I once did exactly that:
The PCs were exploring the tomb of an ancient king when they found out that a small army of aberrations was coming their way (Moria style) and they had a limited amount of time to reactivate an ancient golem (Huge Stone Golem, leagues above their power level at the time) to help repel the enemy, all while fighting the vanguard in waves of progressively stronger enemies.
It was dramatic, intense, fun and nobody complained when the stone golem nailed a beholder to the wall through its eye, thus winning the battle for them, because they felt like they earned the help of such a powerful creature.

The players could probably have done something like that, although again it would have taken special effort. The whole reason for the three day time limit was that the players had to deal with things in the immediate area; if they had weeks they would have simply waited for the Empress to send a massive army to sweep away the raiders effortlessly.

Also, keep in mind that the Lich itself did not win the battle. Indeed, the Lich itself got killed almost immediately and the players could, probably, have even taken it in a straight fight. The lich merely served as an alternate path to getting the ghost army, who again are individually much weaker than the PCs, to work together to drive off the invaders when they players couldn't figure out how to do it themselves.




But generally world shaking plots are overdone and used for cheap drama while they take the focus off the PCs

While I can see where you are coming from, giving the players the ability to decide the fate of the world is a pretty big spotlight. One of the players complaints about the game was that they didn't feel like a big damn hero, and I would imagine that saving the entire world single handedly is probably just about the best way one could go about scratching that itch.






Also, someone asked what I meant by always succeeding being a form of railroading. Well, basically, it makes character decisions and builds meaningless, and it doesn't allow you to think outside the box. If I always succeed, my plan doesn't really matter, so I don't need to put any effort into it. Anyone can succeed at anything, so my character building decisions don't matter either. And if the easiest and most straightforward plan always works, I never have a need to think outside the box and try something different.
My ex-DM was horrible about this. We COULD NOT LOSE. Every encounter was basically him putting on a play, where our decisions were meaningless. He fudged dice like crazy, so every fight started out looking tough, but then we miraculously win because we were never in any real danger. It really made it hard to care, and even harder to put any effort into plans which couldn't affect the outcome of the situation one way or another.

BRC
2016-01-17, 05:56 PM
Very useful post. I am not sure I like the implication that every problem needs to have an ordinary solution, but pointing out the division between ordinary and extraordinary is very insightful and not something I had thought about before. Thank you very much for taking the time to write this.



Not every problem needs an ordinary solution, just any problem you're letting the players find their own answer to. Macguffins are fine, but almost by their very nature, they need to be made explicit options.

If you want to let the players come up with their own plan, the problem they face must be solved by ordinary solutions, because those are the only solutions they can come up with. Any Extordinary Solutions you tell them about are, by definition, not solutions they are coming up with.

Talakeal
2016-01-17, 05:57 PM
Alright, let's make this an excersize.
Talakeal, now that you have the benefit of hindsight and the advice of this thread, describe to us how you would revise that adventure.

Ok, so I am going to assume that I am going to be running fundamentally the same adventure, and for the same group of players, rather than group of forum spectators who are playing devil's advocate :)


And honestly, the answer is, not all that much.

Basically, now that I can read the future I could specifically address what my players were thinking before they did it.

First, make the size of the army and the impossibility of fighting them off without hope more apparent.

Have the NPCs a bit more direct, telling the players that they need a miracle, and maybe even giving a few hints of possible locations.

Make the clues to the things the players skipped over or missed a bit more numerous and / or obvious.

Tell the players that their plans to shore up the town are useful and permitted, but be upfront with them that they are ultimately pointless.

When I first mention the griffons go into more detail about their roll and the capabilities.

And most importantly have a few of the ghosts be a bit less cryptic and insane and more helpful, or at least talkative, so that the players could have more easily figured out how to rally them. This might have actually hurt my first adventure somewhat though, and it would be hard to do without being ham handed. The players did manage to redeem one of the ghosts, maybe I could have had him drop a few heavy hints.


Now, if I wanted to really foolproof the adventure, I could have restructured it.


Had the invasion happen early in the first session, and have the players well aware that they need a miracle to save their village. Then have them stumble upon the various haunted sites while they are fleeing from the village, so that they are exploring everything with the goal of finding a miracle to save their village fresh in their minds.



In the end, the adventure really was pretty solid, it just had a few break points where there was a disconnect between the players expectations and the those of the DM over the game's theme, and a few places where it was too easy to get lost and lose the plot thread. Those are easy to fix, and as the players enjoyed the majority of the session as is all I needed to do was shore up a few breaks in the track to keep the adventure from derailing, if you will excuse the continued railroad analogy.

1of3
2016-01-17, 09:03 PM
Ok, I am still not understanding.

If there are only 6-10 possible actions, doesn't that limit player agency far more than the DM ever could? Even if the DM says "No" to 90% of my ideas, that still leaves me with a heck of a lot more than 6-10 options.

I think you misunderstand the problem with "railroading". While the word implies the lack of options, because you cannot steer a train, that usually is not the problem.

What people actually complain about, when they scream RAILROAD!!!11!, is a misunderstanding about possible options. People will complain about "Railroading", when they thought they could take a certain option but can't. It doesn't matter how many choices are there, it's the sudden realisation that a certain option isn't available.

If you tell people beforehand what to do, most people will accept that. That's pretty much the thing most people here suggested: Be very clear what can and cannot be done with certain fictional elements.

Also note, that these 6 - 10 moves are the basic moves. If you want to have a certain kind of scene or item or something, you can create situational moves.



If everyone has an equal chance of succeeding, doesn't that make the players choices meaningless? For example, the player who is playing the silver tongued diplomat and the bumbling antisocial jerk are equally persuasive, and the player who goes the extra mile of putting together a compelling argument is no better off than the guy who just shouts "DO WHAT I SAY OR ELSE!"

Also, who decides what leverage is sufficient and what actions are too extreme? What would stop someone from, say, convincing the villain to simply surrender outright because otherwise the players will fight back? Or going to even more ludicrous extremes, offering the villain a gold piece if he will kill himself?

Whether or not a good performance should influence Charisma checks is probably one of the most contentious topics in the hobby. That being said, there is a stat you add to the roll, so different characters have different chances.

As for the leverage, the game assumes that NPCs have goals and desires. So the GM, as the person playing those NPCs, has to determine what acceptable leverage is.

Talakeal
2016-01-17, 10:08 PM
I think you misunderstand the problem with "railroading". While the word implies the lack of options, because you cannot steer a train, that usually is not the problem.

What people actually complain about, when they scream RAILROAD!!!11!, is a misunderstanding about possible options. People will complain about "Railroading", when they thought they could take a certain option but can't. It doesn't matter how many choices are there, it's the sudden realisation that a certain option isn't available.

If you tell people beforehand what to do, most people will accept that. That's pretty much the thing most people here suggested: Be very clear what can and cannot be done with certain fictional elements.

Also note, that these 6 - 10 moves are the basic moves. If you want to have a certain kind of scene or item or something, you can create situational moves.




Whether or not a good performance should influence Charisma checks is probably one of the most contentious topics in the hobby. That being said, there is a stat you add to the roll, so different characters have different chances.

As for the leverage, the game assumes that NPCs have goals and desires. So the GM, as the person playing those NPCs, has to determine what acceptable leverage is.

Hmm, I am not sure if I agree with that definition of railroading or not.


Anyway, if the DM is still making the final call over whether or not the plan has a chance of success you are back to square one, right? All the set DCs really do is remove granualarity rather than actually remove the ability for the DM to shut down the players plan if they dont feel that it is feasable.

John Longarrow
2016-01-17, 10:13 PM
Talakeal

As a player and as a DM, I don't think it rude for the players to not follow a plot hook. Unless you told them from the get go they had to find the Mcguffin, they are pretty open to what they can do. Where I a player presented with the same scenario, my first reaction would be to get help. If help to stop an army in the thousands isn't coming, I'd work to evacuate the village and its valuables. They CAN rebuild afterwards. This should take an hour or two at the table. If the people don't leave, I can't make them. I wouldn't be out trying to find someone else unless it was clearly identified early.

That would leave you with the rest of the session to figure out what to do after the army destroys the village. Kinda like when you have a dungeon laid out that the party doesn't go into. Yes, I've had that happen before. Just had to adapt quickly. Fortunately I keep a lot of extra ideas around. Party went for another adventure I had and it turned out to be ablast. Taught them to NEVER trust a fay guide....

1of3
2016-01-17, 10:32 PM
Hmm, I am not sure if I agree with that definition of railroading or not.

It's a bit mindboggling, I know. Think about it from a player's perspective. Under what condition can players realize, they are being "railroaded" (whatever that may be)? - When they try something and it doesn't work. At that point of time it doesn't matter what other working solutions might be left. The one that should have worked from there perspective has been blocked and now they feel betrayed.



Anyway, if the DM is still making the final call over whether or not the plan has a chance of success you are back to square one, right? All the set DCs really do is remove granualarity rather than actually remove the ability for the DM to shut down the players plan if they dont feel that it is feasable.

Yes and no. The thing is, there absolutely positively is something that can sway that NPC. You might not have it yet, but it's out there. If you're wondering what they want, Spout Lore (http://www.dungeonworldsrd.com/moves#TOC-Spout-Lore).

NichG
2016-01-18, 12:38 AM
Again, this might work in a narrative game where the plot shifts to match the players preconceptions, but this isn't that kind of game. If, for example, I am running a murder mystery and have decided that the Butler did it, and the players are absolutely convinced the uninvolved neighbor did it, and the players spend all their time staking out the neighbors house, I am not "blocking" them when they don't find clues, I am just following the scenario I have laid out. Now I COULD throw them a bone and change the plot around so that the neighbor was involved, but that requires me to go out of my way to change up everything, and not all players are for that kind of thing.

You don't have to do anything drastic, just exercise your creativity to figure out how to not 'wimp' on the players while at the same time preserve the constraints. For example:

- Shortly into the search, the players find an iron-clad alibi for the neighbor - evidence that they were sleeping with their mistress, time-stamped chat logs on their computer that mean they couldn't have been there, whatever.

- Along with that, or alternately, make it so that each 'investigation' the players do permits (really, forces) the murderer to advance their agenda by one step. I say 'forces' because for the murderer, taking extra actions or having things happen threatens them with increased exposure. So while they may want to keep their head down, you can easily come up with a dozen things that happen around them that might provoke them to action. A classic one is that some unrelated person discovers the evidence that the PCs could have found if they had picked right, but the murderer discovers this fact and is forced to kill again to keep that evidence hidden. The tradeoff is that the evidence may be permanently lost, but now there's a second murder with its associated cloud of clues.

Neither of those change the fact 'the butler did it', but both of those mean that the players' choice advances the story (for good or ill) rather than inducing stagnation.

JAL_1138
2016-01-18, 06:06 AM
Where a player ought to "go along with the adventure" and where it's acceptable not to is a fuzzy line but one that becomes pretty apparent in an "I'll know it when I see it" sense after a while. If the premise of the game is that we're going to the Tomb of Horrors, and you join the game, your character should go to the Tomb of Horrors. They might not be happy about it, if that's the character's personality, but they should go. On the other hand, there's situations like my current game, where the PCs not going where I had planned, and later skipping the options I had planned for a) really made complete sense by the players' reasoning and b) resulted in a completely new direction for the campaign that's easier for me to DM with less prep time and is more fun for them to play. It's hard to pin down exactly in a definition or easy rule, but there are a LOT of situations where jumping the rails is not just okay but the better decision for the characters and the campaign. I wasn't upset in the slightest when they first veered off, just caught off-guard, and it's worked out for the best. Everything I did have planned is getting used elsewhere or going into my folder.

Like I said in an earlier post, except in situations where you've prepped for something incredibly specific like the Tomb of Horrors (in which case that's also going to be the pitch for the game), prep time is never really wasted if the players go off the rails. All that's happened is you've got a bucketload of prepwork for a later session done in advance. File the serial numbers off and use it elsewhere. They don't meet the Old Man in Scene 24? Change the setup and details a bit and use him for the Bridgekeeper down the line. They don't fight the Three-Headed Knight? Reskin and use the stats for the leader of the Knights Who Say "Ni," or the Black Beast of Aaagh. They can't break into the French Taunter's castle? You can easily tweak it around and use much of the interior for Swamp Castle, or Castle Aaagh. You haven't wasted prepwork, you've done it in advance. If I need an unplanned adventure in a town or city, for example, I've got several that I can yoink out of the file folder and run with a (very) little fiddling. Most are stolen from modules and tweaked around 'till they're not so recognizeable, or things I've used (or prepped and not used) in older games, that I can tweak to fit the current one. I didn't prep them all at once, just kept them around. It didn't take terribly long to get them ready when I was first prepping them, and now it takes 15-20 minutes of coming up with new names and tweaking to fit party level, tops. I can call a smokebreak and get it all ready pretty easily.

I think I'd go nuts and lose my will to DM if I was putting in 2-3 hours of prep per play-hour though. I'm much, much too lazy as a DM for that. 2-3 hours of prep per whole session is more my speed, or 1-1 maybe if I'm having to rework a lot or build a lot from scratch. I do play editions that are a lot less crunchy and quicker to build encounters for than 3.PF, and I steal a lot of premade encounters and maps from published material, and I have a file folder of campaign-agnostic prep I've already done, so grain of salt and whatnot on the prep time. Crunchier systems and greater setting detail are going to take more time, especially from scratch. I still think you may be overprepping, or at least overplanning, though.


Also, on another note:
Your Player A wants to feel like a Big Damn Hero, not just technically be one. Pressing the "Summon Godzilla" button so Godzilla saves the world feels less heroic than personally facing down tough odds and winning in order to save one single town from an evil wizard, even if far fewer lives have been saved and far fewer foes defeated. IRL example, I'd be responsible for a hell of lot more dead whitetail deer if I went to a venison-farm with a Gatling gun, but I wouldn't feel like much of a hunter at all. (Edit: Not a great 1:1 sort of example, because I'd feel horrible and disgusted with that, rather than simply feel like I hadn't accomplished much.)

I would avoid scenarios where the players have to call on a miracle to resolve the plot, as a general rule (not just to appease Player A, but in any game). Solutions should generally be ones the players carry out themselves. If there's a battle of armies, either they should be in the thick of it carrying out some vital mission that will turn the tide (e.g., blow up the shield generator, or break the dam, or take out the pillbox with the machine-gun that's holding down a major stretch of beach), or killing the BBEG while the armies fight, or else they (the PCs, not just the players) should be commanding units under the mass-combat rules. They should be doing things, not causing things to happen.

neonchameleon
2016-01-18, 07:11 AM
This is very good advice, and a lesson I learned long ago. I can honestly say this didn't happen here. The players didn't come up with truly out of the box ideas that I didn't think of, they instead came up with very in the box ideas that I already had solid reasons why they wouldn't work; and if they had it would have made the PCs more or less redundant and would have made for a mundane adventure where the PCs are superfluous.

So. The PCs came up with ideas that you as the omniscient GM had already thought of. Why so smug about that? What was it that made you want to shut down every single one of those ideas in favour of things illogical and that they would never have thought of?

And no it wouldn't have made the PCs redundant to deal with things. As you found out what you did actually made the PCs redundant. What they were trying to do wouldn't have.


As for the dragon, it wasn't crystal clear. The players just asked for local rumors that might be relevant, and I gave them a list. The players scoffed at the notion of a dragon living nearby and dismissed in. In truth the "dragon" was not actually a true dragon but rather a river spirit with a tremendous knowledge of the region who could have given the players a lot more information on the situation and their enemy, but that didn't happen so it's neither here nor there.

In short the PCs responded appropriately to the rumour because it was a false rumour. There was no dragon to help.

The problem here lies with the adventure design.


Again, those are all plausible scenarios with the players taking extraordinary actions to make them work. My players simply expected spending 10-15 minutes setting up a few improvised booby traps and a handful of animated objects would allow a couple dozen semi trained fighters to take on a force fifty times their size.

Why is there this mismatch between their expectations and yours? And what do you mean 10-15 minutes?

[PBTA]

If everyone has an equal chance of succeeding, doesn't that make the players choices meaningless? For example, the player who is playing the silver tongued diplomat and the bumbling antisocial jerk are equally persuasive, and the player who goes the extra mile of putting together a compelling argument is no better off than the guy who just shouts "DO WHAT I SAY OR ELSE!"

For starters one's going to be a Manipulate check while the other is Going Aggro (Intimidate). Second they have different stats so will get a different stat bonus - the antisocial jerk may be rolling 2d6-2 while the silver tongued PC might be at 2d6+2


Also, who decides what leverage is sufficient and what actions are too extreme? What would stop someone from, say, convincing the villain to simply surrender outright because otherwise the players will fight back?

One of the options against Go Aggro is always to suck it up and keep coming even on the most successful rolls. (This means that if the PC is aiming a gun and says "Stop or I shoot" the NPC is automatically hit if they keep coming).


While I can see where you are coming from, giving the players the ability to decide the fate of the world is a pretty big spotlight. One of the players complaints about the game was that they didn't feel like a big damn hero, and I would imagine that saving the entire world single handedly is probably just about the best way one could go about scratching that itch.

If you want to make the PCs feel like Big Damn Heroes you give them stakes they are invested in.

Rescuing a cat out of a tree if the cat is a pet they care about and they get praised and thanked for it will do more to make them feel like Big Damn Heroes than rescuing a world they don't care about where the PCs never thank them.

(Not that either will go that far, although for opposite reasons - but investment is key).

Airk
2016-01-18, 10:00 AM
If there is no variable difficulty or DM discretion what stops players from doing things that are wildly innapropriate? Like what if someone set out to create a nuclear reactor in a medieval fantasy setting?

The best way to deal with this, especially in a game like Dungeon World is "Okay, how do you do that?" Then watch them squirm.



Might I ask How people get low level characters involved in big world shaking plots? If using Macguffins or getting help from more powerful characters is inappropriate, I am kind of at a loss as to how low lwevel characters are supposed to participate in non trivial events.

Ever read Lord of the Rings? Sure, you could protest that that's a Macguffin, only it's not from the critical angle - namely, that The One Ring ISN'T a crazy powerful item that solves all the problems for them.

I think a large part of your problems is that you have a tendency to use extremely strange and unhelpful definitions.



But yeah, I suppose the problem was one of communication. The goal I had in mind was find a macguffin, while the players thought it was defend the town.

You know, I never really thought about it before. I have certainly never FELT railroaded, but then again I have never really tried to go completely off the rails before either. Heck, normally the party polices its own, if one person wants to run off on their own and do something crazy the other party members refuse to go along with it and then the DM tells the lone wolf that he is not going to run a solo session and that the PC needs to either sit out or make a new character.

To me this almost goes beyond asking the DM to accommodate you and into the realm of taking advantage of the DM. Even if I don't like an adventure, I can still have fun going along with it. If it is a recurring problem I may talk to the DM or even leave the campaign, but actually refusing to go on whatever adventure the DM has planned strikes me as unspeakably rude, and I can't believe you think it's ok that you put the effort into making six full adventure paths all for nothing. I don't know about you, but I normally spend 2-3 times the length of the actual session on prep-work.

I have played a lot of games over the years on both sides of the screen, and I have never even considered just ditching the adventure entirely nor can I recall having seen another player do so.


Now, you see, you're running into all kinds of social contract issues, and you probably haven't given any thought to that at all. IS IT an implicit assumption of your games that the players will "play nice" and "follow the plot"? Do your PLAYERS know that? And if so, have you accepted that you are basically running a voluntary railroad, and that you need to put down some track so that people will know where they are going?

Because one of the first rules of a LOT of games is "play to find out what happens" and that could very easily mean "The PCs don't go on the adventure you thought they were going to go on." Of course, you're running D&D, so if that happens you're kindof screwed because your game is a mechanical monster that requires tons of setup to make its core activity happen.



Again, this might work in a narrative game where the plot shifts to match the players preconceptions, but this isn't that kind of game. If, for example, I am running a murder mystery and have decided that the Butler did it, and the players are absolutely convinced the uninvolved neighbor did it, and the players spend all their time staking out the neighbors house, I am not "blocking" them when they don't find clues, I am just following the scenario I have laid out. Now I COULD throw them a bone and change the plot around so that the neighbor was involved, but that requires me to go out of my way to change up everything, and not all players are for that kind of thing.

No, you're not obligated, but you might want to just give the neighbor a bloody alibi so that you can all get on with your lives, right?



Another thing to keep in mind is that if the situation is too "easy" or "simple", it creates holes in the narrative. Tossing aside meta-game concepts like challenge for a moment, you might still have to say "No" to preserve verisimilitude. For example, right now I am designing an encounter for a weird west style game where a thunder bird is eating local livestock and the players are asked to kill it. I need to make it difficult to kill and to reach so that the villagers actually need to hire the players to do it rather than just doing it themselves, and part of the strategy is by making it too large to be affected by most poison, only leave its lair at night, live in an area which is inaccessible to horses, and it living in a cave which cannot be blocked off, surrounded, sniped, or blown up with dynamite.
Now, these things might serve to say "No" to some of the players plans, but that isn't their purpose, their purpose is to make it so that the players need to do or to be something extraordinary to be called in the first place and be considered heroes when they succeed; if this wasn't the case the NPCs would have just taken care of the problem themselves.

This is ridiculous. Why not come up with some reasons with the NPCs haven't done these things that don't involve those things being absolutely impossible under all circumstances? How about "They just don't have enough poison for that." or "It has a great sense of smell, so you'll need a very sneaky poison"? Why does the area being inaccessible to horses stop the NPCs from doing anything? What kind of cave can't be blocked off with dynamite? Or surrounded? Seriously? I mean, if you're operating under the assumption that the NPCs have all that stuff (snipers? Really?) then I've already found two or three holes that you've left unblocked that the NPCs could totally have done. Consider limiting the capabilities of your NPCs instead of making your challenges crazy convoluted.



On a broader note, I played FATE once, and it was by far the most miserable experience of my entire gaming career, and I don't want to do anything like it again. However, I am willing to accept that it might be a fluke and might give the system or a similar one a try, if for nothing other than to expand my horizons, however it would need to be with a good group whom I trusted and who were willing to let me ease myself into it.

Well, good luck, since it sounds like you've never found one of those. Actually, I have a hard time believing Fate was that much worse than most of the stuff you post on this board....



Also, I actually played a little Mutants and Masterminds, and it didn't seem to be an overly narrativist system. Aside from a few RP mechanics like your weaknesses it seemed to be a pretty straightforward problem solving game where the rules did not preclude the possibility of failure.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.



If there are only 6-10 possible actions, doesn't that limit player agency far more than the DM ever could? Even if the DM says "No" to 90% of my ideas, that still leaves me with a heck of a lot more than 6-10 options.

You're right. You don't understand. How does only having 6-10 things that you are forced to roll for "limit" your actions? Do you roll when your PC walks somewhere in D&D? No, you do not. And yet, walking somewhere is still an option that is available to you, even though you don't have to roll for it...



If everyone has an equal chance of succeeding, doesn't that make the players choices meaningless? For example, the player who is playing the silver tongued diplomat and the bumbling antisocial jerk are equally persuasive, and the player who goes the extra mile of putting together a compelling argument is no better off than the guy who just shouts "DO WHAT I SAY OR ELSE!"

Where do you get the idea that all characters are equal? And in fact, if you had read the moves thoroughly, you would understand that you NEED that compelling argument before you can even roll. Unless of course the NPC finds "DO WHAT I SAY OR ELSE!" a very compelling argument. Which they might, depending on the situation, don't you think?



Also, who decides what leverage is sufficient and what actions are too extreme? What would stop someone from, say, convincing the villain to simply surrender outright because otherwise the players will fight back? Or going to even more ludicrous extremes, offering the villain a gold piece if he will kill himself?

What do you mean "Who decides"? The same person who decides that you need mithril to make a mithril shirt, no matter how high your crafting roll is. The GM? The same person who decides that if you roll a natural 20 on your diplomacy check, that the bad guy doesn't kill themselves because you asked REAAAAALLLY nicely. Nowhere in D&D does it say in the rules that you can't persuade someone to fall on their sword by offering them a copper piece. Dungeon World doesn't need to say that in the rules either.



I am legitimately curious as to how the game handles these. I am sure there are explanations for most of them, I just can't see them; I am not simply trying to "win the argument" by poking holes in the game system, although I think I probably come across that way.

What you are doing is throwing up a lot of strawman arguments without considering how you know these things are already handled. By the GM not making things happen if they don't make sense. If a player in D&D says "My character jumps to the moon" and then rolls a 20 on an athletics check, does it happen? Apparently, in your games it does? Or if it doesn't, then that is EXACTLY the reason it doesn't happen in Dungeon World.

neonchameleon
2016-01-18, 10:41 AM
Nowhere in D&D does it say in the rules that you can't persuade someone to fall on their sword by offering them a copper piece.

From memory there was a DC 50 bluff check in the 3.0 PHB to get someone to jump in a pool of acid. And an "Almost too impossible to consider" bluff is only +20 to DC by the 3.5 SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/bluff.htm). A successful bluff check indicates that the target behaves as you wish (usually for 1 round or less).

So trying to get someone to see their God and go to heaven by running onto your sword or standing still for a coup de grace is RAW DC of 20 + their sense motive check (we've already gone past puts the target at significant risks and to something almost too impossible to consider). The Glibness (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/glibness.htm) spell gives you +30 to bluff checks.

So in 3.5 by the RAW there is a DC that applies. In less sim-systems you can just say "Seriously?"

goto124
2016-01-18, 11:04 AM
The last time we talked about acid, we brought up this question:

"Is it fantasy green bubbly acid, or realistic colorless odorless looks-just-like-water HCl?"

John Longarrow
2016-01-18, 11:31 AM
The last time we talked about acid, we brought up this question:

"Is it fantasy green bubbly acid, or realistic colorless odorless looks-just-like-water HCl?"

Hey, watch out with that real world stuff... Next thing we know someone will bring up Dihydrogen Monoxide and how lethal it is when you breath it.

Segev
2016-01-18, 12:23 PM
Hey, watch out with that real world stuff... Next thing we know someone will bring up Dihydrogen Monoxide and how lethal it is when you breath it.

Not to mention the terrible burns its gaseous form causes when exposed to unprotected skin.

Segev
2016-01-18, 12:25 PM
More seriously, though, Talekeal, your main problem, as I see it, was a difference in expectations.

Take some pains to point out what the goal is in character, and this probably won't be nearly so big of an issue in the future.

As I've said, the way I'd have handled it would've been to have a village leader come forth - not necessarily THE village leader, just somebody respected and capable - when they rallied the town, and spell out, "We can only hold out for [time length] once the attack starts, unless we get help. You guys are the best suited to find that help. Go!"

Talakeal
2016-01-18, 01:39 PM
So. The PCs came up with ideas that you as the omniscient GM had already thought of. Why so smug about that? What was it that made you want to shut down every single one of those ideas in favour of things illogical and that they would never have thought of?

There is nothing "smug" about it. The DM needs to create problems so the PCs have problems to solve, simple as that.

To go back to using a Lord of the Rings example, imagine if Gandalf had never suggested throwing the ring in mount doom, the DM hoping the Hobbit's would figure it out on their own. So instead Frodo's player decides their quest is to go to Mordor and kill Sauron directly. So the DM accommodates them and lets four first level hobbits storm the gates of Mordor, defeat the armies of orcs, and finally kill Suaron in a dual. The game might be fun, but sooner or later the players are going to start making jokes and asking question like "Man, that Sauron guy sure was a pushover. Why was everyone so afraid of him? If four hobbits could take him out why didn't Gondor think of killing him years ago?"

In my game, the plot was the village is going to be destroyed by a huge enemy horde. That's the setup. Its not about "shutting down ideas" its about saying they are insufficient for the enemy they are fighting. Again, like I said on page 1, if the players are fighting a dragon and they decide to "conserve their power" and try and kill it with a few sticks and stones, a magic missile, and a trained wardog it isn't the DM shutting down anything when the dragon kills them, it is just running the given scenario by the rules.

The intended quest was to find a way to enlist the aid of the huge ghost army which is only a few hours away and which the players had seen for themselves just the previous day. That doesn't seem illogical to me. (And again, they could have found other solutions to the problem, they just would have involved thinking outside the box. If they had done something like Vaarsuvius' plan to summon an imp and mail his severed head to his former master I would have allowed it to work just fine and applauded their creativity.)

Again, the problem is a lack of communication and telegraphing imo.


And no it wouldn't have made the PCs redundant to deal with things. As you found out what you did actually made the PCs redundant. What they were trying to do wouldn't have.

If the threat was small enough that the townsfolk could have defeated the enemies themselves they would have done so; the players could play a small role in the victory, but they wouldn't have been crucial to the effort.

Now, verisimilitude aside, how is getting a ghost army to defend a town any more of the players being left out than getting griffons, animated objects, and a peasant militia to fight for them? Both were the PCs (and the player's) ideas, and both involved them marshaling allies to defend the town for them rather than fighting themselves.

They were the only ones with the bravery and curiosity to explore the haunted tower and find the ghost army. They couldn't figure out how to control it directly, so they came up with and executed the idea of freeing the lich and using his phylactery to compel him to do it for them.

The only difference in my mind is that one was their first idea rather than their second.


In short the PCs responded appropriately to the rumour because it was a false rumour. There was no dragon to help.

Well, no, it wasn't false, it was just slightly inaccurate. It was an optional side mission, but the reward was vast amounts of information on both the local region and the enemy, which the players could have easily used to come up with a plan or find a weakness to exploit. It was a dragon-like creature, and it would have been more than willing to help.

Honestly your statement seems to be intentionally antagonistic; you seem to be saying that unless a rumor is 100% accurate it is false and should best be ignored even though it has an element of truth and would be tremendously useful.


Why is there this mismatch between their expectations and yours? And what do you mean 10-15 minutes?

And that is the million dollar question.

I mean 10-15 minutes were spent on the plans.

As a sequence of events:

I say the sheriff comes back furious at the local lord for ordering the people to evacuate the local militia to protect refugees rather than the town.

The players ask if they can convince their parents and some of their friends to stay and defend the town and ask the sheriff to form them into a posse and give them what equipment and training she can.

I say ok, but they are still outnumbered fifty to one, it won't be enough.

The players ask a local tinker if he can rig up some booby traps. (We then get into a side conversation about how Home Alone would have been a horrific deathtrap rather than a comedy, which stopped the game for a bit) The tinker agrees, and tells them that his traps will sure kill a few of the invaders, but he himself isn't going to stick around to help defend the town as the fight is hopeless.

Then the monk wants to hunt down and kill some of the enemy's scouts. I ask him why, he says to demoralize them, and I say ok, you can kill enough scouts to demoralize them enough that they will no longer leave the main group and now the enemy has no idea what you are planning; but keep in mind that killing a few scouts does not significantly diminish the size of the overall force.

The players then ask if they can burn the crops and poison the well, and I say sure, those are fairly standard tactics, however that will only come into play after the village has already been lost. The players ask if they can poison the well preemptively and then come up with a neutralizing agent to deploy if the village is saved. I tell them it is possible but they don't have the skill or materials to do so, and so they go visit the wise woman. They find that she is gone and has left a note saying she has gone to a library in a local city to research the enemy and will be back as soon as she can*.

The players then wait until nightfall of the second night (I didn't plan on this big time skip, this kind of caused a crunch that wasn't initially part of the scenario) and sneak into the enemies camp and set fire to their supply tents. They succeed, but fail a stealth test to escape and are captured.

They are then interrogated by the big bad and set free. They are told that burning their supplies will make the enemy a bit hungrier and more desperate to raid the village, but that they can survive by foraging for the 36 hours until the attack. The PCs try and convince the enemy to give up his plan as it is dishonorable, but the enemy, an animalistic neutral, tells them that he has literally no concerns with such mannish concepts as honor. I suppose this is the only time I actually "shut them down," but having a player with no social skills appeal to something which the villain doesn't care about and cause them to abandon their entire life's work is, in my mind, both anticlimactic and immersion breaking.

Aside from the conversation with the big bad, which wasn't actually part of the PCs plans and more an RP / exposition option, none of this took more than 15 minutes, not counting side chatter about Home Alone.

At this point I asked the players what their next step was, and they said "Wait until they attack and fight," and I then I explained to them that none of their plans were enough to actually fight of the enemy, they are still outnumbered 50 to 1 and a few traps aren't going to change that.

The sorceress then says she will spend all her spells animating objects. I say that it is a good idea, but again, a few extra fighters aren't going to swing the battle, and she will then be out of spells for the rest of the session. She says she doesn't care and does it anyway.

I say the players still need to find help. They say they can't think of any. Then the adventure stalls.

After an hour or two of sitting around doing nothing I have the local wise-woman return and act as DM mouth piece, telling them they need to do something desperate and dangerous as it will take a miracle to save the town. One player suggests waking the lich, the other's say no.

After some more indecision I come out from behind the screen and tell them that they still have yet to investigate the why the lord is acting so strangely, the rumors about the druid or the dragon, and that there are still a few rooms in the haunted tower that they haven't explored which could have relevance.

So they go to the lord, get more info, and then try and mess with the griffons but lack the skills to make anything come of it. But they do get more RP and info out of the situation.

Then they go back to the tower, explore the last few rooms, find the liche's phylactery, and try and communicate with the ghosts. Unfortunately as the sorceress is out of spells this turns out to be trickier than they anticipated and again they are out of ideas. One player wants to raise the lich, and the other two refuse. They sit there squabbling and grasping at straws for another 20 minutes or so before I tell them to just let him free the lich as it is a valid solution to the problem and everyone is getting bored and grumpy just sitting around arguing and doing nothing.

They wake the lich and tell him what is going on. He magically compels the ghosts to follow him (again, something the sorceress could have potentially done herself if she was near full power), and marches to the village.

Then we play out the battle. The players fight and get pretty beat up but kill more than their fair share. Due to the defenses the players placed in the village there are zero casualties or property damage inflicted. The lich tries to destroy the big bad directly and is killed, but the big bad, who is no wounded, seeing his army slaughtered by ghosts, orders a retreat, and the party returns to town as heroes and have won the respect they set out for in the first place and saved the town.


*This was probably a misstep. If she had been there she could have acted as DM mouth piece a bit and set them on the right track. Instead I could have had her deliver her research to the PCs in the epilogue and gotten the same thing across.



Ever read Lord of the Rings? Sure, you could protest that that's a Macguffin, only it's not from the critical angle - namely, that The One Ring ISN'T a crazy powerful item that solves all the problems for them.

I think a large part of your problems is that you have a tendency to use extremely strange and unhelpful definitions.


Hmm, yeah looking at TV tropes you appear to be correct. It actually has an article on why most people think the One Ring is a classic Macguffin but actually isn't one at all. What definition do you think would be better?


Now, you see, you're running into all kinds of social contract issues, and you probably haven't given any thought to that at all. IS IT an implicit assumption of your games that the players will "play nice" and "follow the plot"? Do your PLAYERS know that? And if so, have you accepted that you are basically running a voluntary railroad, and that you need to put down some track so that people will know where they are going?

Because one of the first rules of a LOT of games is "play to find out what happens" and that could very easily mean "The PCs don't go on the adventure you thought they were going to go on." Of course, you're running D&D, so if that happens you're kind of screwed because your game is a mechanical monster that requires tons of setup to make its core activity happen.

Honestly it has never come up for me. I have played in and ran a lot of games over the years and have never seen this happen. As I said unthread, occasionally one player will want to abandon the plot or the group, but the rest of the players stick to it and social pressure to stick with the group always defuses it.

I have always assumed that in any game there is a social contract that the DM will try and run and adventure the players want to play in and the players will go along with it, and I have never seen evidence to the contrary except for an occasional lone player who wants to go all murder hobo on the game.


No, you're not obligated, but you might want to just give the neighbor a bloody alibi so that you can all get on with your lives, right?.

This means that the DM needs to know what the players are thinking beforehand. In the murder example that's pretty easy. In my case the players did a bunch of things, none of them taking more than 2-3 minutes, and I didn't know what their end goal was, so I (in retrospect probably incorrectly) just let things play out naturally to see where they were going.


This is ridiculous. Why not come up with some reasons with the NPCs haven't done these things that don't involve those things being absolutely impossible under all circumstances? How about "They just don't have enough poison for that." or "It has a great sense of smell, so you'll need a very sneaky poison"? Why does the area being inaccessible to horses stop the NPCs from doing anything? What kind of cave can't be blocked off with dynamite? Or surrounded? Seriously? I mean, if you're operating under the assumption that the NPCs have all that stuff (snipers? Really?) then I've already found two or three holes that you've left unblocked that the NPCs could totally have done. Consider limiting the capabilities of your NPCs instead of making your challenges crazy convoluted.

Ok, so this is still just something that is in the brain storming stage rather than an actual adventure, so don't analyze the scenario too heavily.

Basically, the location is based on a real cave I saw last summer in the Grand Canyon. A deep cave high up on one of the canyon walls under an overhang, which was only accessible by a narrow scree covered trail which you would have to climb on foot single file. I thought it would make a great lair for a flying desert monster because it is so well defended.

The monster absolutely could be killed by a special poison, it is just too large to easily drug with things the locals have on hand. It doesn't have absolute immunity or anything, and an alchemist PC probably could come up with something, and a merchant PC could probably track something down.

By sniper I don't actually mean like a veteran sharpshooter, one of those would be very helpful and probably will be one of the PCs. What I mean is that the monster lives in a cave on a cliff face and only comes out at night, so they can't just set up a posse with rifles on the far canyon wall and shoot it while it is eating / sleeping / pooping / etc.

The only thing that is kind of contrived that I need to work on is why dynamite can't simply be used to bring down the whole cliff face, which I think can be handled by some sort of avalanche risk. A variation on what Warhammer 40,000 says when asked why in this far future they are still handling things with infantry skirmishes rather than orbital bombardment; you don't want to risk destroying the very thing you are fighting over.

These are not hyper competent NPCs or something. They are just a regular small frontier town defended by a sheriff and his deputies and a few local hunters and ranch hands with rifles and shotguns. It doesn't take anything special to simply station a ring of guys with shotguns outside the monsters lair or to throw a bunch of dynamite in the entrance and run, anyone can do this unless I go out of my way to cripple them.


I guess I could make it like a convent of nuns or a town too poor to afford gunpowder or something, but why? Doing so would be fore more convoluted and would make whatever the PCs do more anticlimactic and less heroic, so what's the point?


The very first non freeform RPG I run was an AD&D second edition game. The players defeated the boss monster effortlessly by simply running around and shooting arrows and spells at it without ever letting it get into melee range. I mentioned this to our regular DM, one of our teachers (we were 12-13 at the time) and he explained to me that you need to place monsters in appropriate terrain. A creature with a low movement speed and no ranged attacks won't just be out in the middle of a field, it will choose a lair that covers up its weaknesses. That seemed like a good lesson at the time, and you are the first person I can recall talking to that seems to think its a bad idea.

Although I did have a player once who bitched anytime I put terrain on the battlefield because monsters always live in environments suited to their own abilities rather than the PCs and that the CR system doesn't account for fighting sea monsters in the water or kobolds in dungeons with low ceilings.


Well, good luck, since it sounds like you've never found one of those. Actually, I have a hard time believing Fate was that much worse than most of the stuff you post on this board.....

Basically I am a deep immersion RPer and I really get into character. They wanted me to keep getting out of character to play NPCs and sometimes they even had us swap PCs for a while. I said I wasn't comfortable playing someone else's character and didn't like the idea of other people taking control of my character away from me. I asked if I could simply stick to one character for a session or two until I got the hang of the game and felt a little bit more comfortable with other people's characters before controlling them. They said no, and then kicked me out of the group for having the audacity to even make the request.

As I said, I am willing to give the game a try if I can find a group who will let me ease into it rather than simply throwing me in the deep end and saying sink or swim.


You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Which word? Narrativist? Could you please elaborate on how my definition differs from yours?


You're right. You don't understand. How does only having 6-10 things that you are forced to roll for "limit" your actions? Do you roll when your PC walks somewhere in D&D? No, you do not. And yet, walking somewhere is still an option that is available to you, even though you don't have to roll for it...

Where do you get the idea that all characters are equal? And in fact, if you had read the moves thoroughly, you would understand that you NEED that compelling argument before you can even roll. Unless of course the NPC finds "DO WHAT I SAY OR ELSE!" a very compelling argument. Which they might, depending on the situation, don't you think?

What do you mean "Who decides"? The same person who decides that you need mithril to make a mithril shirt, no matter how high your crafting roll is. The GM? The same person who decides that if you roll a natural 20 on your diplomacy check, that the bad guy doesn't kill themselves because you asked REAAAAALLLY nicely. Nowhere in D&D does it say in the rules that you can't persuade someone to fall on their sword by offering them a copper piece. Dungeon World doesn't need to say that in the rules either.


What you are doing is throwing up a lot of straw-man arguments without considering how you know these things are already handled. By the GM not making things happen if they don't make sense. If a player in D&D says "My character jumps to the moon" and then rolls a 20 on an athletics check, does it happen? Apparently, in your games it does? Or if it doesn't, then that is EXACTLY the reason it doesn't happen in Dungeon World.

Again, please try to keep this constructive and not be overly antagonistic. I am trying not to be defensive, but it is hard when you phrase things like this.

D&D actually does have rules for walking from place to place, and for just about everything a real person could do short of graphic biological functions and purely internal processes. But yeah, walking from place to place is not extraordinary or contested. You say I am making a straw-man argument, but don't you think comparing walking to actively using a skill which would require a test is a bit of the same?

I do not "already know how these things are handled," as I have not read Dungeon World. I asked a friend to let me borrow his copy, but it is packed away somewhere and he says he will get it to me when he finds it.

I was told in this thread that an action can't fail in Dungeon World, and that running it would teach me how to game without being able to say No to my players. I took this at face value, I have no reason not to, and I am genuinely curious about how the game handles a few of the glaring problems that spring to mind. For example, PCs who attempt ridiculous tasks, or that if something is possible anyone can still succeed on it regardless of their specific methodology or character abilities.

Now you are telling me that the DM can deny a player success, so I am wondering what the actual difference is. This isn't a "straw man" I honestly and legitimately don't see what the difference is between telling a player "No, that's impossible" and "No, that's impossible unless you can make a DC 600 athletics test," in practice they will have exactly the same outcome.


More seriously, though, Talekeal, your main problem, as I see it, was a difference in expectations.

Take some pains to point out what the goal is in character, and this probably won't be nearly so big of an issue in the future.

As I've said, the way I'd have handled it would've been to have a village leader come forth - not necessarily THE village leader, just somebody respected and capable - when they rallied the town, and spell out, "We can only hold out for [time length] once the attack starts, unless we get help. You guys are the best suited to find that help. Go!"

Yeah, I pretty much totally agree at this point.

OldTrees1
2016-01-18, 01:54 PM
@Talakeal

By now most of the areas of improvement have been discussed in depth. However I think there is one more that you would benefit from examining in more detail.

You are not running a sandbox campaign, yet you give your players free reign in planning what to try. This is a good structure since it emphasizes player choice while still remaining on target. However this inherits one of the challenges that sandbox campaigns have. Namely how do you enable the players to see what you didn't see yourself. Success with this challenge will greatly enhance your game if the attempted plans of your players are any indication.

GloatingSwine
2016-01-18, 02:01 PM
Now, verisimilitude aside, how is getting a ghost army to defend a town any more of the players being left out than getting griffons, animated objects, and a peasant militia to fight for them? Both were the PCs (and the player's) ideas, and both involved them marshaling allies to defend the town for them rather than fighting themselves.


Griffons are animals, animated objects are the players' own constructs, and a peasant army is individually weaker than the PCs.

It's easier for the players to see those as resources they are deploying to solve the problem rather than a vastly more powerful force they are appealing to to solve the problem instead of them.

Talakeal
2016-01-18, 02:44 PM
Griffons are animals, animated objects are the players' own constructs, and a peasant army is individually weaker than the PCs.

It's easier for the players to see those as resources they are deploying to solve the problem rather than a vastly more powerful force they are appealing to to solve the problem instead of them.

Well, I am not sure if an animated construct and a magically compelled undead are that different, but I will give you that one.

However the ghosts, peasants, and griffons are all individually weaker than the individual PCs but stronger than them as a group. Even the lich is weaker than the PCs as a party.

However I do see that the ghosts, as a group, are stronger than the ENEMIES while the other groups are not.



@Talakeal

By now most of the areas of improvement have been discussed in depth. However I think there is one more that you would benefit from examining in more detail.

You are not running a sandbox campaign, yet you give your players free reign in planning what to try. This is a good structure since it emphasizes player choice while still remaining on target. However this inherits one of the challenges that sandbox campaigns have. Namely how do you enable the players to see what you didn't see yourself. Success with this challenge will greatly enhance your game if the attempted plans of your players are any indication.

/agree

The Glyphstone
2016-01-18, 03:17 PM
Ghosts might be, where griffons, animated constructs, or a peasant army aren't enough to beat the enemy. But griffons and animated constructs and a peasant army and rigging booby traps andperforming a mass prayer ceremony to Elanicus, God of Narratively Unlikely Victories, might be enough to beat the enemies. If the players come up with enough small contributions, it's not unreasonable to allow for them all to collectively equal the one big contribution you already had planned.

JAL_1138
2016-01-18, 04:49 PM
There is nothing "smug" about it. The DM needs to create problems so the PCs have problems to solve, simple as that.

To go back to using a Lord of the Rings example, imagine if Gandalf had never suggested throwing the ring in mount doom, the DM hoping the Hobbit's would figure it out on their own. So instead Frodo's player decides their quest is to go to Mordor and kill Sauron directly. So the DM accommodates them and lets four first level hobbits storm the gates of Mordor, defeat the armies of orcs, and finally kill Suaron in a dual. The game might be fun, but sooner or later the players are going to start making jokes and asking question like "Man, that Sauron guy sure was a pushover. Why was everyone so afraid of him? If four hobbits could take him out why didn't Gondor think of killing him years ago?"

In my game, the plot was the village is going to be destroyed by a huge enemy horde. That's the setup. Its not about "shutting down ideas" its about saying they are insufficient for the enemy they are fighting. Again, like I said on page 1, if the players are fighting a dragon and they decide to "conserve their power" and try and kill it with a few sticks and stones, a magic missile, and a trained wardog it isn't the DM shutting down anything when the dragon kills them, it is just running the given scenario by the rules.

The intended quest was to find a way to enlist the aid of the huge ghost army which is only a few hours away and which the players had seen for themselves just the previous day. That doesn't seem illogical to me. (And again, they could have found other solutions to the problem, they just would have involved thinking outside the box. If they had done something like Vaarsuvius' plan to summon an imp and mail his severed head to his former master I would have allowed it to work just fine and applauded their creativity.)

Again, the problem is a lack of communication and telegraphing imo.



It's also a problem with the intended solution. Recruiting a big ghost army is generally not the best option. Yes, LOTR did it, but that's a book, not a game. In the game, the PCs should either A) retreat; B) find a solution they do, not just a miracle cause; or C) die in a failed defense (at which point they roll new characters elsewhere and get the setup of "A village was overrun by a large army recently; now the King is recruiting specialists in addition to regular troops..." and get hired as Spec Ops).


If the threat was small enough that the townsfolk could have defeated the enemies themselves they would have done so; the players could play a small role in the victory, but they wouldn't have been crucial to the effort.

Never seen The Seven Samurai or The Magnificent Seven, I take it? Maybe the players are the only ones who can persuade them to fight, teach them to fight, and organize them.


Now, verisimilitude aside, how is getting a ghost army to defend a town any more of the players being left out than getting griffons, animated objects, and a peasant militia to fight for them? Both were the PCs (and the player's) ideas, and both involved them marshaling allies to defend the town for them rather than fighting themselves.

They were the only ones with the bravery and curiosity to explore the haunted tower and find the ghost army. They couldn't figure out how to control it directly, so they came up with and executed the idea of freeing the lich and using his phylactery to compel him to do it for them.

The only difference in my mind is that one was their first idea rather than their second.


Glyphstone took the words right out of my mouth upthread. The peasant army, animated objects, and booby traps might equal a ghost army if taken together, and then it'd be the players' plan that won the day.

It's also a difference in kind. One is a supernatural "Win Button," a miracle so to speak, the other is something that involves but does not solely consist of player-deployed and player-controlled magical elements and does consist of things the players did, not just technically caused (at least two of the players are probably feeling like the Lich is the "hero" rather than themselves, even though they're technically the reason he got involved, if only because you told them to go ahead and do that to get the session done with).




And that is the million dollar question.

I mean 10-15 minutes were spent on the plans.

As a sequence of events:

I say the sheriff comes back furious at the local lord for ordering the people to evacuate the local militia to protect refugees rather than the town.

The players ask if they can convince their parents and some of their friends to stay and defend the town and ask the sheriff to form them into a posse and give them what equipment and training she can.

I say ok, but they are still outnumbered fifty to one, it won't be enough.

The players ask a local tinker if he can rig up some booby traps. (We then get into a side conversation about how Home Alone would have been a horrific deathtrap rather than a comedy, which stopped the game for a bit) The tinker agrees, and tells them that his traps will sure kill a few of the invaders, but he himself isn't going to stick around to help defend the town as the fight is hopeless.


Why would they even *be* outnumbered 50:1? Armies don't use that kind of force on a pissant village they expect to wipe out. If they want to destroy it, they pretty much set fire to it and leave. If they want to raid it for supplies, they don't want to send more troops than the village, when raided, will actually supply, otherwise they've lost, logistically speaking. They want to use as few troops as they can get away with and still be assured a win. And for every soldier, there's at least one or two in a support role. Horses have to be fed and kept and shod. Meals cooked, wounds tended, equipment maintained and ported. To outnumber them 50:1 with just the troops, there are going to be more people in the opposing force than raiding the village can probably support. And the PCs don't need to kill off all the support (although that wouldn't be a bad idea if they could pull it off somehow, like let the enemy overrun the empty village and spring a surprise attack on the camp, now that the Monk took out the scouts).

Why would the tinker not stick around (fight is hopeless, yeah, sure, have the PCs persuade him maybe), or at least leave plans the PCs can follow to build or deploy traps? Why would nobody suggest things that large numbers of peasants could rig up large numbers of fairly quickly, like wooden spikes to severely impede cavalry and infantry? Collapse a building onto a road to block it, preferably while enemies are on it? Archers on rooftops? Caltrops? You don't have to slaughter the whole force, just make it no longer feasible for the enemy to take the village without excessive losses quickly enough.



The players then wait until nightfall of the second night (I didn't plan on this big time skip, this kind of caused a crunch that wasn't initially part of the scenario) and sneak into the enemies camp and set fire to their supply tents. They succeed, but fail a stealth test to escape and are captured.

They are then interrogated by the big bad and set free. They are told that burning their supplies will make the enemy a bit hungrier and more desperate to raid the village, but that they can survive by foraging for the 36 hours until the attack. The PCs try and convince the enemy to give up his plan as it is dishonorable, but the enemy, an animalistic neutral, tells them that he has literally no concerns with such mannish concepts as honor. I suppose this is the only time I actually "shut them down," but having a player with no social skills appeal to something which the villain doesn't care about and cause them to abandon their entire life's work is, in my mind, both anticlimactic and immersion breaking.

Ok...here's where I get called a killer DM...saboteurs have infiltrated the camp, set supply tents on fire, and gotten captured? No commander in his right mind would set them free. Off with their heads, roll new characters (at another location), continue the campaign in a new location as described earlier, after the destruction of the village. I'd give them a chance to escape before having the BBEG show up to monologue, but if they botched that or didn't take it...off with their heads. The BBEG setting them free after they burned all the food would just not happen, I don't think. But I'm probably in the minority there.


Aside from the conversation with the big bad, which wasn't actually part of the PCs plans and more an RP / exposition option, none of this took more than 15 minutes, not counting side chatter about Home Alone.

Infiltrating the camp should take more than 15 minutes. I dunno if you didn't draw out a map or what, but this shouldn't go this quick. This should be a fair amount of the game session. Draw out a map, go into combat rounds or "dungeon mode" for time, and run it like a dungeon. Burning supply-tents are going to be a HUGE distraction for the enemy, so a failed stealth roll after the tents are ON FIRE shouldn't draw more troops than the ones IMMEDIATELY near them. They can potentially fight and/or run their way out, here. Even if several spot them, a fighting retreat should still be an option because the enemy troops are going to be busy with ALL THE FOOD IS BURNING.

Again, though, if they do lose the (few) fight(s) on the way out, that should be death or a daring escape.



At this point I asked the players what their next step was, and they said "Wait until they attack and fight," and I then I explained to them that none of their plans were enough to actually fight of the enemy, they are still outnumbered 50 to 1 and a few traps aren't going to change that.

The sorceress then says she will spend all her spells animating objects. I say that it is a good idea, but again, a few extra fighters aren't going to swing the battle, and she will then be out of spells for the rest of the session. She says she doesn't care and does it anyway.

I say the players still need to find help. They say they can't think of any. Then the adventure stalls.

After an hour or two of sitting around doing nothing I have the local wise-woman return and act as DM mouth piece, telling them they need to do something desperate and dangerous as it will take a miracle to save the town. One player suggests waking the lich, the other's say no.

An hour or two? Out-of-game, real world hours? You didn't suggest something they could do, like "you could go do X," or just play the fight out and let them die off? Anything's better than stalling out for two hours doing nothing, even "Rocks Fall." You eventually brought in an NPC and mentioned things, but that should happen way before an hour or two of zilch goes by.



Unfortunately as the sorceress is out of spells this turns out to be trickier than they anticipated and again they are out of ideas. One player wants to raise the lich, and the other two refuse. They sit there squabbling and grasping at straws for another 20 minutes or so before I tell them to just let him free the lich as it is a valid solution to the problem and everyone is getting bored and grumpy just sitting around arguing and doing nothing.

They wake the lich and tell him what is going on. He magically compels the ghosts to follow him (again, something the sorceress could have potentially done herself if she was near full power), and marches to the village.

Then we play out the battle. The players fight and get pretty beat up but kill more than their fair share. Due to the defenses the players placed in the village there are zero casualties or property damage inflicted. The lich tries to destroy the big bad directly and is killed, but the big bad, who is no wounded, seeing his army slaughtered by ghosts, orders a retreat, and the party returns to town as heroes and have won the respect they set out for in the first place and saved the town.

They saved the town by doing what two of the three players expressly did not want to do, raise a lich, which you told them to do because they wree getting grumpy. I can see why they're miffed. And if your lich is weaker than the party and the party can take the Big Bad, why are the party not facing the Big Bad instead of the lich doing it? Then they would be heroes (or die trying).



Honestly it has never come up for me. I have played in and ran a lot of games over the years and have never seen this happen. As I said unthread, occasionally one player will want to abandon the plot or the group, but the rest of the players stick to it and social pressure to stick with the group always defuses it.

I have always assumed that in any game there is a social contract that the DM will try and run and adventure the players want to play in and the players will go along with it, and I have never seen evidence to the contrary except for an occasional lone player who wants to go all murder hobo on the game.


It's there to a degree; if you show up to play D&D, you should want to play D&D, which tends to involve adventuring of some variety and not just sitting in the inn drinking or running from everything (a character that wants to run, but ultimately doesn't because of conscience, is another matter). But there's often solid reason not to bite on a quest ("this other threat seems bigger, we can't get sidetracked" or "that seems pointlessly dangerous for no reward, let's try another approach" or "wait, they said something about going to Greyhawk, let's skip this bumblescum town and go straight to the city," for example.) Or just coming up with a different solution to the adventure's problem. I've said it a few times now, but it worked out for the best in my current game, including for me as a DM, for my campaign to go completely off the rails.



Ok, so this is still just something that is in the brain storming stage rather than an actual adventure, so don't analyze the scenario too heavily.

As a geek, I'm legally obligated to overanalyze things on the internet. :smalltongue:



Basically, the location is based on a real cave I saw last summer in the Grand Canyon. A deep cave high up on one of the canyon walls under an overhang, which was only accessible by a narrow scree covered trail which you would have to climb on foot single file. I thought it would make a great lair for a flying desert monster because it is so well defended.
[snip...]
The very first non freeform RPG I run was an AD&D second edition game. The players defeated the boss monster effortlessly by simply running around and shooting arrows and spells at it without ever letting it get into melee range. I mentioned this to our regular DM, one of our teachers (we were 12-13 at the time) and he explained to me that you need to place monsters in appropriate terrain. A creature with a low movement speed and no ranged attacks won't just be out in the middle of a field, it will choose a lair that covers up its weaknesses. That seemed like a good lesson at the time, and you are the first person I can recall talking to that seems to think its a bad idea.


I'm putting words in someone else's mouth here, but using terrain at all isn't the complaint, it's that you're arbitrarily using it and making it way too restrictive. You're describing it ways that limit what the players can do to exactly one thing, rather than simply not having NPCs who can pull that stuff off. The PCs getting the idea to dynamite the cave and having to either go buy or brew up their own dynamite might be a good option (most towns aren't going to have it sitting around unless they're mining or railroad towns, and the mine or railroad may not want to part with their necessary supplies).

Instead of describing it as "a cave that can't be snipered, dynamited (any cave can be dynamited, even Mammoth Cave), ridden to on horseback, etc." try describing it as "a cave on a narrow ledge under an overhang" and see what the players do, rather than trying to think of things they can't do. Maybe they can't snipe directly into the cave, but they could station a sniper and throw in a smoke bomb to get the monster to fly out. Stationing outside with shotguns is a good idea, but maybe it's going to simply take better gunfighters and braver people than the town has--it's going to be to convince a bunch of people who are being eaten by this thing to go stand next to its den and wait for it to come out, for one thing. Not to mention, guns are expensive, ammunition's expensive, etc., and there are going to be fewer of them than you think--a lot of old west towns actually didn't allow guns in the town limits, or had strict rules about how they could be kept, so only the farmers on the outskirts and the sherrif and deputies would have them legally.

And why would any of the townsfolk do it themselves if they can easily hire a bunch of out-of-towners to do it? If they die, the townsfolk are not out much. Maybe the monster's only started its attacks just before the PCs arrive, so they haven't even found its den yet, other than "somewhere up in them there hills, and I ain't goin' up there to look. I'll gladly pay you gents to do it, though."



Basically I am a deep immersion RPer and I really get into character. They wanted me to keep getting out of character to play NPCs and sometimes they even had us swap PCs for a while. I said I wasn't comfortable playing someone else's character and didn't like the idea of other people taking control of my character away from me. I asked if I could simply stick to one character for a session or two until I got the hang of the game and felt a little bit more comfortable with other people's characters before controlling them. They said no, and then kicked me out of the group for having the audacity to even make the request.

That's Bizarro Gaming World, not how FATE is played from what I understand of it. It's just a rules-lite, flexible gaming system that also gives you some narrative-impacting abilities you can spend to succeed where you'd otherwise fail (FATE points, Stunts) or affect the story; and gives you clearer social-interaction stats than CHA, Diplomacy, Bluff, and Intimidate (like Aspects). Having you play NPCs and switch characters with other players is...frankly weird. The game does not normally play that way, unless I'm badly mistaken.

Talakeal
2016-01-18, 05:25 PM
It's also a problem with the intended solution. Recruiting a big ghost army is generally not the best option. Yes, LOTR did it, but that's a book, not a game. In the game, the PCs should either A) retreat; B) find a solution they do, not just a miracle cause; or C) die in a failed defense (at which point they roll new characters elsewhere and get the setup of "A village was overrun by a large army recently; now the King is recruiting specialists in addition to regular troops..." and get hired as Spec Ops).



Never seen The Seven Samurai or The Magnificent Seven, I take it? Maybe the players are the only ones who can persuade them to fight, teach them to fight, and organize them.



Glyphstone took the words right out of my mouth upthread. The peasant army, animated objects, and booby traps might equal a ghost army if taken together, and then it'd be the players' plan that won the day.

It's also a difference in kind. One is a supernatural "Win Button," a miracle so to speak, the other is something that involves but does not solely consist of player-deployed and player-controlled magical elements and does consist of things the players did, not just technically caused (at least two of the players are probably feeling like the Lich is the "hero" rather than themselves, even though they're technically the reason he got involved, if only because you told them to go ahead and do that to get the session done with).




Why would they even *be* outnumbered 50:1? Armies don't use that kind of force on a pissant village they expect to wipe out. If they want to destroy it, they pretty much set fire to it and leave. If they want to raid it for supplies, they don't want to send more troops than the village, when raided, will actually supply, otherwise they've lost, logistically speaking. They want to use as few troops as they can get away with and still be assured a win. And for every soldier, there's at least one or two in a support role. Horses have to be fed and kept and shod. Meals cooked, wounds tended, equipment maintained and ported. To outnumber them 50:1 with just the troops, there are going to be more people in the opposing force than raiding the village can probably support. And the PCs don't need to kill off all the support (although that wouldn't be a bad idea if they could pull it off somehow, like let the enemy overrun the empty village and spring a surprise attack on the camp, now that the Monk took out the scouts).

Why would the tinker not stick around (fight is hopeless, yeah, sure, have the PCs persuade him maybe), or at least leave plans the PCs can follow to build or deploy traps? Why would nobody suggest things that large numbers of peasants could rig up large numbers of fairly quickly, like wooden spikes to severely impede cavalry and infantry? Collapse a building onto a road to block it, preferably while enemies are on it? Archers on rooftops? Caltrops? You don't have to slaughter the whole force, just make it no longer feasible for the enemy to take the village without excessive losses quickly enough.




Ok...here's where I get called a killer DM...saboteurs have infiltrated the camp, set supply tents on fire, and gotten captured? No commander in his right mind would set them free. Off with their heads, roll new characters (at another location), continue the campaign in a new location as described earlier, after the destruction of the village. I'd give them a chance to escape before having the BBEG show up to monologue, but if they botched that or didn't take it...off with their heads. The BBEG setting them free after they burned all the food would just not happen, I don't think. But I'm probably in the minority there.



Infiltrating the camp should take more than 15 minutes. I dunno if you didn't draw out a map or what, but this shouldn't go this quick. This should be a fair amount of the game session. Draw out a map, go into combat rounds or "dungeon mode" for time, and run it like a dungeon. Burning supply-tents are going to be a HUGE distraction for the enemy, so a failed stealth roll after the tents are ON FIRE shouldn't draw more troops than the ones IMMEDIATELY near them. They can potentially fight and/or run their way out, here. Even if several spot them, a fighting retreat should still be an option because the enemy troops are going to be busy with ALL THE FOOD IS BURNING.

Again, though, if they do lose the (few) fight(s) on the way out, that should be death or a daring escape.


An hour or two? Out-of-game, real world hours? You didn't suggest something they could do, like "you could go do X," or just play the fight out and let them die off? Anything's better than stalling out for two hours doing nothing, even "Rocks Fall." You eventually brought in an NPC and mentioned things, but that should happen way before an hour or two of zilch goes by.


They saved the town by doing what two of the three players expressly did not want to do, raise a lich, which you told them to do because they wree getting grumpy. I can see why they're miffed. And if your lich is weaker than the party and the party can take the Big Bad, why are the party not facing the Big Bad instead of the lich doing it? Then they would be heroes (or die trying).



To answer your questions:

Sure, a group of experienced warriors could figure out a way to defend a town. That is a fine adventure and one that I have run before. However, this was never intended to be that sort of mission, and the PCs are not warriors, experienced or otherwise. This was a follow up to the previous days game about exploring ancient mysteries, and the PCs were simply a bunch of curious kids out to have an adventure and prove themselves.

The tinker might have been persuaded to stay in the town. Basically he was an outcast and said he would help the town, but didn't care to die trying to save the people who cast him out and treated him like garbage. The party agreed and said goodbye, they probably could have convinced him to stay if they tried.

The liche could not take the Big Bad, and was killed fairly quickly when it tried.

The enemy was not a traditional army. Basically, he was an aspect of a god who materialized in the region and compelled all of the indigenous peoples to go on a rampage and destroy any human settlements in their territory.

The big bad has a powerful ally who is only helping on the condition that he does everything in his power to minimize casualties on both sides, so he isn't eager to off the PCs. He also hopes to recruit one of the PCs for reasons not really relevant to this discussion.

Also, basically I had them roll a stealth check to infiltrate the camp (they passed). Then they cast control winds to blow their campfire into their tent and then spread the fire. They cast the spell, no roll required. Then I had them roll another stealth test to leave, which they failed, and then I RPed the interrogation scene.


As a geek, I'm legally obligated to overanalyze things on the internet. :smalltongue:



I'm putting words in someone else's mouth here, but using terrain at all isn't the complaint, it's that you're arbitrarily using it and making it way too restrictive. You're describing it ways that limit what the players can do to exactly one thing, rather than simply not having NPCs who can pull that stuff off. The PCs getting the idea to dynamite the cave and having to either go buy or brew up their own dynamite might be a good option (most towns aren't going to have it sitting around unless they're mining or railroad towns, and the mine or railroad may not want to part with their necessary supplies).

Instead of describing it as "a cave that can't be snipered, dynamited (any cave can be dynamited, even Mammoth Cave), ridden to on horseback, etc." try describing it as "a cave on a narrow ledge under an overhang" and see what the players do, rather than trying to think of things they can't do. Maybe they can't snipe directly into the cave, but they could station a sniper and throw in a smoke bomb to get the monster to fly out. Stationing outside with shotguns is a good idea, but maybe it's going to simply take better gunfighters and braver people than the town has--it's going to be to convince a bunch of people who are being eaten by this thing to go stand next to its den and wait for it to come out, for one thing. Not to mention, guns are expensive, ammunition's expensive, etc., and there are going to be fewer of them than you think--a lot of old west towns actually didn't allow guns in the town limits, or had strict rules about how they could be kept, so only the farmers on the outskirts and the sheriff and deputies would have them legally.

And why would any of the townsfolk do it themselves if they can easily hire a bunch of out-of-towners to do it? If they die, the townsfolk are not out much. Maybe the monster's only started its attacks just before the PCs arrive, so they haven't even found its den yet, other than "somewhere up in them there hills, and I ain't goin' up there to look. I'll gladly pay you gents to do it, though."


Ok, so I am now kind of confused. Earlier people were telling me "Don't think of solutions, just think of problems and let the players figure out what to do," but now you seem to be telling me that I need to come up with player solutions.

Other people are telling me not to give players false hope. So if I describe a setting where X plan obviously won't work, should I not mention it upfront?

At this point I don't have any idea how the players will solve the problem, and I certainly don't have "just one thing" in mind as you imply. Your smoke bomb plan sounds like it would work fine, and it certainly wasn't something I thought of.

All I have done so far is set up the scenario so that the villagers have a need to call upon HEROES rather than patsies, which is more or less what the players are if the only reason the villagers hired them is because they don't want to risk their own hides performing a simple, albeit dangerous, job.



That's Bizarro Gaming World, not how FATE is played from what I understand of it. It's just a rules-lite, flexible gaming system that also gives you some narrative-impacting abilities you can spend to succeed where you'd otherwise fail (FATE points, Stunts) or affect the story; and gives you clearer social-interaction stats than CHA, Diplomacy, Bluff, and Intimidate (like Aspects). Having you play NPCs and switch characters with other players is...frankly weird. The game does not normally play that way, unless I'm badly mistaken.

I have been told they did it wrong, but that was still my experience. Everything I hear about storytelling games seems to imply that breaking immersion and thinking outside of your characters head are big parts of the game though, so I am kind of hesitant to try as I can't help but feel it will turn out the same way.

LnGrrrR
2016-01-18, 05:32 PM
Talakeal, your biggest problem is trying to think of every possible action the PCs might take and coming up with an answer for it. For one, they will come up with something you haven't thought, and then you are stuck. Two, your worlds become artificial because everything becomes too perfect, which leads to railroading.

So the players want to use dynamite to crush the cave. Sure! But maybe the explosion ends up way bigger than they thought, or there's something hidden in the cave that they want to get their hands on instead, or any number of results.

It's fine to let players win in non-traditional fashion. And you know, you could always have the dragon fly out, bruised but alive, and really pissed off.

See, if you think of 10 things the PCs can do, and then think up how to counteract those things, it's a bit unfair. Because guess what? The PCs will likely think of those 10 things too, and when they get a steady diet of "No, that won't work" or "No, that's not enough", they're going to feel a bit bummed out. You know why they call adventurers? Because they're too lazy/afraid/etc. Hey, I could make donuts at home if I really wanted to. But usually, I just buy them. You're overthinking it here.

Finally, I would suggest making villains who at least have some sort of motivation that... is realistic. You've got this random guy who listens to a god, who wants to cause famine for some reason, and yet the god is only interested in taking out random small villages? None of that really makes sense. Why are there suddenly a million indigenous peoples in the area? Where do they get knowledge of attacking a city? Are they mind controlled or what?

Talakeal
2016-01-18, 06:02 PM
Talakeal, your biggest problem is trying to think of every possible action the PCs might take and coming up with an answer for it. For one, they will come up with something you haven't thought, and then you are stuck. Two, your worlds become artificial because everything becomes too perfect, which leads to railroading.

So the players want to use dynamite to crush the cave. Sure! But maybe the explosion ends up way bigger than they thought, or there's something hidden in the cave that they want to get their hands on instead, or any number of results.

It's fine to let players win in non-traditional fashion. And you know, you could always have the dragon fly out, bruised but alive, and really pissed off.

See, if you think of 10 things the PCs can do, and then think up how to counteract those things, it's a bit unfair. Because guess what? The PCs will likely think of those 10 things too, and when they get a steady diet of "No, that won't work" or "No, that's not enough", they're going to feel a bit bummed out.


Again, I don't care what the PCs do, only what the NPCs do. I am absolutely not thinking up an answer for everything the PCs might do, I am just thinking of a couple plans that the NPCs would have tried before the players even got there.

You really think that having the sheriff go "Well, the problem is the beastie spends its days in that cave over yonder. (pause to describe the cave) As you can see, the trail's too narrow for a posse to climb, and none of my deputies fancy their chances of going in alone. We thought about just dynamiting the cave shut, but old man smith, he's the town local engineer, thinks that we might start an avalanche and bury the whole dang town, so that's right out," is going to make the players feel discouraged and railroaded?

Off the top of my head the players could:

Directly climb into the beast's cave during the day and kill it.
Figure out its feeding pattern and ambush it while it is eating.
Bait it into a trap.
The aforementioned smoke bomb idea.
Wait until it leaves its lair and then shoot it in the wing (perhaps with a ballista) to ground it
Figure out a way to dynamite the cave that won't cause an avalanche
Brew a poison strong enough to affect a creature of its size
Use animal empathy or the like to tame the creature or convince it to find a new hunting ground
Use magic to do, well, anything
Call in outside help to do something they can't

That's ten ideas just off the top of my head. Your really telling me that four players between them, given some time to prep, can't come up with any of those ideas, or indeed anything else besides have a posse surround its cave with shotguns or blow up the cave with dynamite?

Heck, I just thought of a few more ideas in the time it took me to write that last sentence, mostly involving having someone sneak into the cave while the creature is out.


Finally, I would suggest making villains who at least have some sort of motivation that... is realistic. You've got this random guy who listens to a god, who wants to cause famine for some reason, and yet the god is only interested in taking out random small villages? None of that really makes sense.

Ok, so imagine your goal is to destroy a kingdom.

You have total control over all of the indigenous peoples in the region, which outnumber the civilized men by a noticeable, but not enormous, margin.

The natives lack the strength to storm the cities or castles or to defeat the kingdom's armies in an open battle.

How would you go about doing this?

For that matter, isn't creating a famine to defeat a fortified opponent a fairly basic military tactics? Isn't the whole concept of a "siege" based around cutting off the enemy's food source and then starving them out?

John Longarrow
2016-01-18, 06:34 PM
Talakeal

Please let me know if you type very differently from how you talk in person. From what I am gathering, most of the information that is most relevant to how you set up your adventure, how the players reacted, and how you dealt with their plans has been coming out very piecemeal. The picture we are getting days later is different than the initial description of what happened at your table.

If you speak as you type, then a major problem that you may want to work on is making sure to get information out early and in a memorable manner. If you are unclear why I am pointing his out, please re-read your original post and then all of your subsequent posts elaborating on your game. From behind the screen, making sure everyone has a clear understanding of what is going on and why is very important. This is especially true if you have important plot points you need the players to complete to advance your story.

As has been pointed your descriptions are of a party that doesn't understand the type of adventure you had planned. If you have not done so, I'd recommend asking your players what they understood the adventures goals to be and ask them how you can better convey your intents. Its all find and dandy if WE understand what you are going for, but if your PLAYERS don't, the game doesn't work.

John Longarrow
2016-01-18, 06:41 PM
Ok, so imagine your goal is to destroy a kingdom.

You have total control over all of the indigenous peoples in the region, which outnumber the civilized men by a noticeable, but not enormous, margin.

The natives lack the strength to storm the cities or castles or to defeat the kingdom's armies in an open battle.

How would you go about doing this?

For that matter, isn't creating a famine to defeat a fortified opponent a fairly basic military tactics? Isn't the whole concept of a "siege" based around cutting off the enemy's food source and then starving them out?

If your goal is to starve out the city, you do so by sending out a LOT of raiding parties to hit all of their sources of supply at once. You don't do it by keeping your army concentrated if you can't defeat their armies in an open battle. You also don't attack the villages, you attack the crops. Crops burn easily. Crops are BIG and hard to defend. Crops don't fight back.

Even better is to identify how those crops get to the cities. Attack infrastructure and storage. Burning a thousand acres of grain won't affect the city tomorrow. Burning down the granary will. Destroying a village doesn't stop other villages from sending crops to the city. Destroying goods to market/burning or smashing bridges does. If the goal is to start a famine, about the WORST option for your leader is to keep his army in one place for any length of time. Doing so means he's not working on removing resources and paints a giant bullseye on his army. Even in an E6 game several spell casters can do a lot of damage to an army in the thousands that is being nice and stationary.

Talakeal
2016-01-18, 06:57 PM
If your goal is to starve out the city, you do so by sending out a LOT of raiding parties to hit all of their sources of supply at once. You don't do it by keeping your army concentrated if you can't defeat their armies in an open battle. You also don't attack the villages, you attack the crops. Crops burn easily. Crops are BIG and hard to defend. Crops don't fight back.

Even better is to identify how those crops get to the cities. Attack infrastructure and storage. Burning a thousand acres of grain won't affect the city tomorrow. Burning down the granary will. Destroying a village doesn't stop other villages from sending crops to the city. Destroying goods to market/burning or smashing bridges does. If the goal is to start a famine, about the WORST option for your leader is to keep his army in one place for any length of time. Doing so means he's not working on removing resources and paints a giant bullseye on his army. Even in an E6 game several spell casters can do a lot of damage to an army in the thousands that is being nice and stationary.

This was not a one time event, he is hitting villages like this all across the kingdom. He is also starting plagues, kidnapping or blackmailing noblemen, inciting riots, destroying roads, dams, and bridges, and the like. This whole plot is a lot bigger than the scope of this one adventure, this is just the story of how the PCs got involved.

This is also far from his only army, he can compel tribes across the land to fight for him. He also doesn't normally appear in person or give a three day warning, but his advisors told him he needed to here because of reasons involving the PCs that have not been revealed yet.

Now I don't quite get the distinction between crops and villages. Aren't the crops located next to farming villages? Likewise where are granaries usually located that are not inside of a city or village or near the crops themselves?


Talakeal

Please let me know if you type very differently from how you talk in person. From what I am gathering, most of the information that is most relevant to how you set up your adventure, how the players reacted, and how you dealt with their plans has been coming out very piecemeal. The picture we are getting days later is different than the initial description of what happened at your table.

If you speak as you type, then a major problem that you may want to work on is making sure to get information out early and in a memorable manner. If you are unclear why I am pointing his out, please re-read your original post and then all of your subsequent posts elaborating on your game. From behind the screen, making sure everyone has a clear understanding of what is going on and why is very important. This is especially true if you have important plot points you need the players to complete to advance your story.

As has been pointed your descriptions are of a party that doesn't understand the type of adventure you had planned. If you have not done so, I'd recommend asking your players what they understood the adventures goals to be and ask them how you can better convey your intents. Its all find and dandy if WE understand what you are going for, but if your PLAYERS don't, the game doesn't work.

When I type I try and stay as brief as possible, my initial post was already really long, and in my experience the longer a post the less likely people are to read and respond to it. So I leave out the details that I feel are not relevant or abbreviate the longer plot points. This is a thread trying to pinpoint and solve a very specific problem, not a campaign log.

But yes, trying to find the right level of communication between being too vague and being too boring / condescending is an ongoing problem for me.

John Longarrow
2016-01-18, 07:15 PM
This was not a one time event, he is hitting villages like this all across the kingdom. He is also starting plagues, kidnapping or blackmailing noblemen, inciting riots, destroying roads, dams, and bridges, and the like. This whole plot is a lot bigger than the scope of this one adventure, this is just the story of how the PCs got involved.

This is also far from his only army, he can compel tribes across the land to fight for him. He also doesn't normally appear in person or give a three day warning, but his advisors told him he needed to here because of reasons involving the PCs that have not been revealed yet.

Now I don't quite get the distinction between crops and villages. Aren't the crops located next to farming villages? Likewise where are granaries usually located that are not inside of a city or village or near the crops themselves?

I am not understanding why he would use an army in the thousands to attack a village. Villages are defined in the DMG as having a population of between 401-900 people. This big of a force is going to require tons of supplies per day. They need to either keep moving (taking what they need from where there is food) OR they need a steady supply line. Either makes them very vulnerable to attack. From a military perspective this does not make sense.

Even if HE needs to be there, all those troops don't.

For where most societies place granaries, they are found located at transport hubs. Classic example is Ancient Egypt. Theirs were along the Nile. They could provide food to communities close by (say 20 miles) and were able to be accessed within a day by farmers bringing in their grain. Normally they are not in individual villages (lack of populace) but can also be found in major cities/fortifications. They are normally considered strategic assets and are defended. Attacking them requires coordinated attacks so they can't all be defended.

Please note, this is the first comment we've seen that this is anything besides a big army coming against one village. You've not provided context about this being wide spread.

Talakeal
2016-01-18, 07:25 PM
I am not understanding why he would use an army in the thousands to attack a village. Villages are defined in the DMG as having a population of between 401-900 people. This big of a force is going to require tons of supplies per day. They need to either keep moving (taking what they need from where there is food) OR they need a steady supply line. Either makes them very vulnerable to attack. From a military perspective this does not make sense.

Even if HE needs to be there, all those troops don't.

For where most societies place granaries, they are found located at transport hubs. Classic example is Ancient Egypt. Theirs were along the Nile. They could provide food to communities close by (say 20 miles) and were able to be accessed within a day by farmers bringing in their grain. Normally they are not in individual villages (lack of populace) but can also be found in major cities/fortifications. They are normally considered strategic assets and are defended. Attacking them requires coordinated attacks so they can't all be defended.

Please note, this is the first comment we've seen that this is anything besides a big army coming against one village. You've not provided context about this being wide spread.

I didn't work out the exact numbers. The village has a few hundred people in it, while the raiders outnumber them probably 3:1. I doubt there are thousands of them, probably not even one thousand, but they are drawn from all of the indigenous peoples within the local region rather being an army which marched from a great distance away.

But even 100 raiders would be a nearly insurmountable challenge for 3 first level PCs, 10-20 first level commoners, a sheriff, and a handful of animated objects, even with booby traps.


I didn't mention the larger context because it wasn't relevant to the adventure or to the thread, and I only bring it up now because people are making a unfounded assumptions about what exactly is going on. If people are really curious I can write out a long hand copy of my campaign notes, although I am kind of loathe to do so both because it will take a lot of time to write up and because I don't want my players stumbling across it.

CombatBunny
2016-01-18, 07:25 PM
You defend yourself against any suggestion or comment to identify where did you failed, yet the reality is that your players got bored and/or enraged, and I would as well if I was playing your adventure (for what you describe).

For what you say, all of your setting, NPC motivations, layout and all of your elements are brilliantly planned and justified. What’s the merit of that if your final result is a boring adventure?

Tell me one movie that has made you bored and then tell me why you didn’t like it. Having me justify all of your arguments and contradict all of your opinions will make the time go back and make you actually had enjoy the movie?

Who cares if the mine explodes or not? Who cares if your layout respects all of the geographic logics? Do you think that blockbuster hits try to be perfect and accurate in their physics or logic? We gather to have fun; we don’t gather to awe at how magnificently consistent your setting is.

Make things explode, make things go haywire as long as it’s fun. When a session is fun, everyone forgets about plot-holes and inconsistencies, but when a session is boring, we are going to inspect it in all detail to justify why it was horrible.

Don’t make your world a hive-mind. Not all the soldiers agree or are contempt with their master’s plans, not all members of a regimen are alert at all times trying to spot spies. Flaws make a world come alive, and in a breathing world there is lazy people, there are things that the aggressors didn’t thought about the layout.

You have many hours to plan your adventures and make your villainous plans a master piece of cleverness. Your players on the other side have to think on their feet for something that you planned without pressure and guess what, the same way that the adventurers have more strength, constitution and dexterity than their player’s counterparts, the same way that they have more wisdom, intelligence and social skills than their counterparts.

Smart solutions work on T.V. because the writers control the problem and the answer given by the hero, but almost all the time the viewers are left unable to figure out the solution until the hero comes with it. Either you are more flexible with plans and solutions, or you let them roll intelligence to give them the answers or find a way not to make your adventures insufferable.

As for the example that you mentioned of Sauron from LOTR, in a sandbox game Sauron wouldn’t be a menace right away, because you don’t define your plot ahead of time, you wave it as the players get interested in one particular thread or another. If they simply didn’t engaged with Sauron, he would just be remembered as one of many villains; If they on the other hand feel interest and nurture a particular thread, then that would happen to be the one that will eventually grow to be a world-shaking event.

Talakeal
2016-01-18, 07:59 PM
You defend yourself against any suggestion or comment to identify where you failed, yet the reality is that your players got bored and/or enraged, and I would as well if I was playing your adventure (for what you describe).

For what you say, all of your setting, NPC motivations, layout and all of your elements are brilliantly planned and justified. What’s the merit of that if your final result was a boring adventure?

Tell me one movie that has made you bored and then tell me why you didn’t like it. Having me justify all of your arguments and contradict all of your opinions will make the time go back and make you actually had enjoy the movie?

Who cares if the mine explodes or not? Who cares if your layout respects all of the geographic logics? Do you think that blockbuster hits try to be perfect and accurate in their physics or logic? We gather to have fun; we don’t gather to awe at how magnificently consistent your setting is.

Make things explode, make things go wary as long as it’s fun. When a session is fun, everyone forgets about plot-holes and inconsistencies, but when a session is boring, we are going to inspect it in all detail to justify why it was horrible.

Don’t make your world a hive-mind. Not all the soldiers agree or are contempt with their master’s plans, not all members of a regimen are alert at all times trying to spot spies. Flaws make a world come alive, and in a breathing world there is lazy people, there are things that the aggressors didn’t thought about the layout.

You have many hours to plan your adventures and make your villainous plans a master piece of cleverness. Your players on the other side have to think on their feet for something that you planned without pressure and guess what, the same way that the adventurers have more strength, constitution and dexterity than their player’s counterparts, the same way that they have more wisdom, intelligence and social skills than their counterparts.

Smart solutions work on T.V. because the writers control the problem and the answer given by the hero, but almost all the time the viewers are left unable to figure out the solution until the hero comes with it. Either you are more flexible with plans and solutions, or you let them roll intelligence to give them the answers or find a way not to make your adventures insufferable.

As for the example that you mentioned of Sauron from LOTR, in a sandbox game Sauron wouldn’t be a menace right away, because you don’t define your plot ahead of time, you wave it as the players get interested in one particular thread or the other. If they simply didn’t engaged with Sauron, he would just be remembered as one of many villains, if they on the other hand feel interest and nurture a particular thread, then that would happen to be the one that would grow to be a world-shaking event.

First off, let me say that I actually AGREE with your overall premise. A few plot holes or minor technical flaws DO NOT ruin a movie or a game. Which is why I am NOT trying to justify the actual flaws which came from lack of communication and not meeting player expectations. The only things I am defending myself against are little things like "Your bad guy is dumb! How can you feed an army? Why can't griffons carry riders? How can the sorceress command undead but not kill the army?"


My adventure was not boring and terrible. My PCs all had fun, there was just one snag in the middle which was a bit boring and got people a bit grumpy, but the overall session was a good one and people had fun overall, and after the snag was over they came back and had fun participating and finishing the session. I am fully aware that there were flaws in the game, and I created the thread to address them, I am not the egomaniacal jerk who thinks themselves infallible you are making me out to me and I can admit that, but you are blowing them way out of proportion.


Now then, let me say that you are a vastly different sort of gamer than me or any of my players. A game where I am guaranteed to win and logic and verisimilitude takes a back seat to nonstop action and the RULE OF KEWL!!! would drive me nuts as either a player or a DM, and so frankly your opinion over whether or not you approve of my scenario holds very little bearing for me.


And also, not everyone has the same tastes in movies. From your description it sounds like you feel that Michael Bay's Transformers is the perfect moviebecause it is dumb and loud and exciting, but a lot of people still find it boring as all get out precisely because it is all pretty pictures and black and white stories with no thinking or depth.

JAL_1138
2016-01-18, 08:23 PM
To answer your questions:

Sure, a group of experienced warriors could figure out a way to defend a town. That is a fine adventure and one that I have run before. However, this was never intended to be that sort of mission, and the PCs are not warriors, experienced or otherwise. This was a follow up to the previous days game about exploring ancient mysteries, and the PCs were simply a bunch of curious kids out to have an adventure and prove themselves.

My point is that whether it was intended to be that or not, that's what the PCs wanted/tried to do. There are ways to let them do that, that neither bork your setup nor rely on "I win" buttons.



The tinker might have been persuaded to stay in the town. Basically he was an outcast and said he would help the town, but didn't care to die trying to save the people who cast him out and treated him like garbage. The party agreed and said goodbye, they probably could have convinced him to stay if they tried. Fair enough; that information wasn't given (a running theme, I think; no offense meant, but there seems to be an issue of you saying something, someone reacting to exactly what you said, but turns out there was more information they didn't have. I don't think you're doing that on purpose at all, but think you may need to work on making your explanations and descriptions clearer to begin with. That's also relevant to your game woes--your players can only react to exactly what you describe exactly the way you say it; they can't work on information they don't have). [EDIT: Ninja'd.]



The liche could not take the Big Bad, and was killed fairly quickly when it tried. I'm working from hindsight when discussing your campaign session, obviously, while you weren't; you wouldn't plan out the whole scenario with the one end result that they fight the boss. They still might not've fought him even with no lich there. My point was, if the party could take the boss, would they be allowed to try? And why was it the lich fighting him, rather than the party, if they stood a chance?

I would run up the whole scenario without the ghost army once they've decided to fortify, gather their peasant army, and booby-trap the place. Those three things together stand a chance of succeeding. (And if they die, they die. But I'm in a minority there.)



The enemy was not a traditional army. Basically, he was an aspect of a god who materialized in the region and compelled all of the indigenous peoples to go on a rampage and destroy any human settlements in their territory.

The big bad has a powerful ally who is only helping on the condition that he does everything in his power to minimize casualties on both sides, so he isn't eager to off the PCs. He also hopes to recruit one of the PCs for reasons not really relevant to this discussion.

How...how does that work, exactly? You don't minimize casualties by creating famine. That does the opposite. It's a slower, more painful death on a much larger scale than simple military victories at key strategic points would be. Defeating the armies and leaving noncombatants alone as much as possible would minimize casualties, not starving enough peasants to death that the military and nobility eventually can't keep levying supplies and have to surrender or starve themselves. (It's always the peasants who get hurt first. The Irish potato famine didn't hurt the landlords one whit, and it cost a million lives among the poor and led to a mass exodus...which still didn't hurt the landlords much).



Also, basically I had them roll a stealth check to infiltrate the camp (they passed). Then they cast control winds to blow their campfire into their tent and then spread the fire. They cast the spell, no roll required. Then I had them roll another stealth test to leave, which they failed, and then I RPed the interrogation scene.
That's putting too much on a couple of dice rolls. Like I said, they shouldn't automatically lose once they fail the stealth roll, particularly given that all or much of the army's food is on fire. There should be a great deal of confusion, commotion, and chaos from that, and so a single stealth check should not be their only option to escape once they get to that point.




Ok, so I am now kind of confused. Earlier people were telling me "Don't think of solutions, just think of problems and let the players figure out what to do," but now you seem to be telling me that I need to come up with player solutions.

Other people are telling me not to give players false hope. So if I describe a setting where X plan obviously won't work, should I not mention it upfront?

At this point I don't have any idea how the players will solve the problem, and I certainly don't have "just one thing" in mind as you imply. Your smoke bomb plan sounds like it would work fine, and it certainly wasn't something I thought of.

All I have done so far is set up the scenario so that the villagers have a need to call upon HEROES rather than patsies, which is more or less what the players are if the only reason the villagers hired them is because they don't want to risk their own hides performing a simple, albeit dangerous, job.


Was just chucking out a couple of things I'd try if I were a player, not suggesting you should plan for them to do those particular things. I didn't convey that clearly. The operative phrase was "see what they do," while the smokebomb thing was just an off-the-cuff example of what they might do, based on your description.

Heroes are not just the people who could do the things nobody else could do (those are specialists, who may or may not be heroes). They're the people who do the things nobody else is brave enough or willing enough to. There are a lot of people who are physically fit and quite strong. They still rely on the fire department to run into burning buildings. Some of them are also great shots with a rifle, and they still rely on the members of the military to go to war, because they're not willing themselves. There are plenty of bystanders who are capable of helping an injured person, even if it's just by just calling 911, but they don't, thinking someone else will do it. Lots of people are very much physically capable of tackling someone, but they're not going to do it when that someone is shooting at them or swinging a knife around. Heroes are the ones who do it.

By trying to set it up so that they have to be HEROES~! (actually specialists) to pull off the goal instead of just being the people doing things the townsfolk haven't yet or are too scared to, you inadvertently create a setup that seems very narrow and restrictive on how it can be done. You may have a huge number of things you think would work, but as LnGrrrR said, it becomes a bummer when the immediate solutions someone thinks of get a steady diet of "that won't work." Even if there's ten thousand things that would work, the presentation, the way you're describing it by starting off with "a place where this won't work and that can't be done and neither can this thing," makes it seem like those other 10,000 things won't either; if you set it up that way in game, it's going to make the players feel like none of their ideas will work and they're going to have to do it the specific way you envision, even if you think you haven't done it that way. Your initial description of the cave made me a) want to buck what you're saying can't be done and try to ride a horse up there and throw dynamite in while someone tries to snipe and everyone else is standing around with shotguns, just out of pure spite for the restrictions, and b) think that you intended the players to go in and fight it in its lair and that diddlysquat else would be allowed to work. And that wasn't what you intended! You intended a cave on a narrow ledge underneath an overhang with a monster in it, that there were plenty of approaches toward handling. But because of the way you phrased it, it ended up looking like there was one solution, and nothing else would work.

LnGrrrR
2016-01-18, 08:59 PM
Again, I don't care what the PCs do, only what the NPCs do. I am absolutely not thinking up an answer for everything the PCs might do, I am just thinking of a couple plans that the NPCs would have tried before the players even got there.

You really think that having the sheriff go "Well, the problem is the beastie spends its days in that cave over yonder. (pause to describe the cave) As you can see, the trail's too narrow for a posse to climb, and none of my deputies fancy their chances of going in alone. We thought about just dynamiting the cave shut, but old man smith, he's the town local engineer, thinks that we might start an avalanche and bury the whole dang town, so that's right out," is going to make the players feel discouraged and railroaded?

Off the top of my head the players could:

Directly climb into the beast's cave during the day and kill it.
Figure out its feeding pattern and ambush it while it is eating.
Bait it into a trap.
The aforementioned smoke bomb idea.
Wait until it leaves its lair and then shoot it in the wing (perhaps with a ballista) to ground it
Figure out a way to dynamite the cave that won't cause an avalanche
Brew a poison strong enough to affect a creature of its size
Use animal empathy or the like to tame the creature or convince it to find a new hunting ground
Use magic to do, well, anything
Call in outside help to do something they can't

That's ten ideas just off the top of my head. Your really telling me that four players between them, given some time to prep, can't come up with any of those ideas, or indeed anything else besides have a posse surround its cave with shotguns or blow up the cave with dynamite?

Heck, I just thought of a few more ideas in the time it took me to write that last sentence, mostly involving having someone sneak into the cave while the creature is out.

The problem lies if you don't have the town sheriff enumerate those in advance. Picture this: the sheriff explains the situation, and gives one or two things they've tried. Then player 1 says, "How about we do X?" and sheriff says, "Nope, we already did that." Then the same happens to player 2. Then player 3. What do you think player 4 is going to think happens when he tries to suggest something?

Of course YOU can come up with those ideas. You know exactly what the cave looks like, the monster's habits, etc etc. It should be much easier for you than the players, who are still trying to grok the whole situation. I doubt most players would think of trapping it (what, with nets?), poisoning (with a poison dart or something?), and calling in outside help somewhat defeats the purpose of them being adventurers.

As I noted, the sheriff doesn't have to explain why they want the adventurers to help at all. Does the sheriff have money? Boom. Easy. Do I have to explain why I want a donut when I go to buy one? "Well you see I could've made it at home, but I was running late at work..." It's fine for him to explain one or two things of course (the dynamite thing is a nice touch, but it will also probably put your PCs on path to talk to the engineer about other plans, which is likely a good thing.)


Ok, so imagine your goal is to destroy a kingdom.

You have total control over all of the indigenous peoples in the region, which outnumber the civilized men by a noticeable, but not enormous, margin.

The natives lack the strength to storm the cities or castles or to defeat the kingdom's armies in an open battle.

How would you go about doing this?

For that matter, isn't creating a famine to defeat a fortified opponent a fairly basic military tactics? Isn't the whole concept of a "siege" based around cutting off the enemy's food source and then starving them out?

Ok, so where does this god get the idea of tactics from? What exactly is he a god of? Why does he want to destroy a kingdom anyways? If he wanted famine, polluting the water supply would probably be a little bit easier. Or heck, just introduce some e coli into the meat. :D

A seige is a pretty basic idea, but the EXECUTION of it isn't. Do the indigenous peoples know the trade routes? Do they know exactly when the deliveries are coming? What about their own supplies? Are they raiding the caravans, and how would so many indigenous peoples be able to feed themselves anyways? Usually a siege relies on a smaller number of foes locking out a larger amount of foes, due to their being only so many ways to supply an area.

And to talk about your villain, let's look at him. He's just a figurehead for a deity, right? A deity who, for some reason, wants famine. Does this god have a reason for it, or is it just evil mustache twirly time? Does he get power or is he just a psychopath? What powers does he have? He just doesn't seem well-defined at all.

Up above you said the odds might be 3:1, but 3:1 odds are very defendable. Like, small forces with homeground and the upper hand have prevailed against odds far higher than that. You also stated originally that it was a fight of 50 vs a thousand or something ridiculous, which is why people said running made sense.

So, let's make this easy. How many townspeople are there? (And don't just be like "10 able bodied men" because that's not a town, that's just six houses that happen to be close to each other. Kids, wives, etc could help booby trap, put up walls, etc etc.) And how many raiders are there? Do you know or is it an esoteric number in your head?

Talakeal
2016-01-18, 11:36 PM
Ok, so where does this god get the idea of tactics from? What exactly is he a god of? Why does he want to destroy a kingdom anyways? If he wanted famine, polluting the water supply would probably be a little bit easier. Or heck, just introduce some e coli into the meat. :D

A seige is a pretty basic idea, but the EXECUTION of it isn't. Do the indigenous peoples know the trade routes? Do they know exactly when the deliveries are coming? What about their own supplies? Are they raiding the caravans, and how would so many indigenous peoples be able to feed themselves anyways? Usually a siege relies on a smaller number of foes locking out a larger amount of foes, due to their being only so many ways to supply an area.

And to talk about your villain, let's look at him. He's just a figurehead for a deity, right? A deity who, for some reason, wants famine. Does this god have a reason for it, or is it just evil mustache twirly time? Does he get power or is he just a psychopath? What powers does he have? He just doesn't seem well-defined at all.

Up above you said the odds might be 3:1, but 3:1 odds are very defendable. Like, small forces with homeground and the upper hand have prevailed against odds far higher than that. You also stated originally that it was a fight of 50 vs a thousand or something ridiculous, which is why people said running made sense.

So, let's make this easy. How many townspeople are there? (And don't just be like "10 able bodied men" because that's not a town, that's just six houses that happen to be close to each other. Kids, wives, etc could help booby trap, put up walls, etc etc.) And how many raiders are there? Do you know or is it an esoteric number in your head?

I don't have exact numbers. The total village population was a couple hundred and they are outnumbered roughly 3 to 1 if you include all of the men women and children. The town militia was ordered not to fight, and most of the population has been evacuated. The players were able to convince a couple dozen men and the local sheriff to stay and fight, leaving them outnumbered by something close to 50:1. Exact numbers are probably closer to 35:1 give or take, plus the leaders who have a few supernatural tricks up their sleeves.


The villain is an aspect of the god of the Savage Races. Basically Beastmen, Cyclops, Ettins, Giants, Gargoyles, Goblins, Sahuagin, Grimlocks, Kobolds, Orcs, Ogres, Goliaths, Neanderthal, Yeti, and Scrags. Maybe Lizardfolk and Illithids as well, I haven't decided.

Essentially humans have a stranglehold on the setting, and their Empire controls most of the world. Humans created this Empire because millennia ago a group of gods gave them the secrets of metal working, alchemy, medicine, astronomy, and magic while the rest of the world was in a stone age hunter gatherer state. They were able to quickly rise to power and conquer and exterminate most of the nonhuman races.

The god's goal is too topple the human empire and cull the human population, essentially giving everyone a fresh start. He sees himself as correcting the balance which was upset by the intervention of other gods.

The aspect is more or less just a big strong barbarian of indeterminate species who has the power to manipulate the thoughts and emotions of savage humanoids on a regional level. He also has a magic standard that grants those fighting in his immediate presence the ability to heal by inflicting damage upon civilized men.

His armies are absolutely looting and raiding, but mostly they are just living off their own stores which they foraged from the wilderness and brought with them when they were formed into a horde. Right now his army is not something that can maintain itself for long periods of time.

I am not quite sure what you mean when you ask where he got the idea of tactics from. Poisoning the water supply or creating a plague are beyond the aspect's abilities, although I imagine some of his agents could manage it on a large scale.

I could go into a lot more detail, but this is dragging on, so let me know if you need any more specifics.

Earthwalker
2016-01-19, 06:39 AM
A lot of people have commented on the set up and I think a lot of valid points were made. I can certainly see how the complains your players made have some grounds.
What I find odd about the whole premise of the adventure is this -
At one stage as a player they know this information.

You are not heroes, you are just curious kids. (Original campaign idea)
There is a force at the walls of the village that is beyond your personal power to stop.
The Lord has left the village and taken his guards with him, telling everyone to evacuate.

With this information it seems to be that the first option is to do as the authority figure is telling you and evacuate the village. This was an “I have nothing else prepared” result which I find odd.

HammeredWharf
2016-01-19, 06:47 AM
Bullet-proof world-building isn't that important in typical D&D. It's a good bonus, but players usually care about their current adventures way more. In other words, the most important failure on your part was letting the session stall for a few hours. That's should never happen. The players should always be doing something. That's why you keep a quest giver NPC on standby. If (s)he's not needed, good. However, if the session is turning aimless, the NPC can barge in and tell the players what they should be doing. Maybe it shouldn't be the best option, but it should be something the PCs can do if they run out of other ideas.

Apricot
2016-01-19, 08:05 AM
So much of this adventure you're running seems so strange, and you're very strongly resisting efforts to point that out. I'll just run through the quick list of things which people have already noted as being incredibly odd.

1. The attackers' strategy: if the numbers are anything like what you've pointed out, this is a logistical nightmare. Even if the attack succeeded, they'd starve. If they wanted to stay together, then they'd move quickly instead of waiting days to attack one tiny village. Nobody but you can imagine a realistic foe who would make this kind of bizarre move.

2. The solution to the assault: the players have to both figure out that they're intended to appeal to some higher power to do the fighting for them and figure out what that power is. When writing an adventure, the fundamental rule is that you give people tasks that you can accomplish. The players trust that they will be able to do what is required of them, and that if something is impossible that it will be appropriately communicated. You broke that trust, which is evidenced by your players' reaction.

3. Awakening greater powers, part 2: from a story sense, it isn't reasonable to expect that the first solution one goes to in order to defend a small village is waking up a lich, coercing a dragon, or getting ghosts to do your work for you. That is a last resort, when not even running away is an option, and you're willing to risk the threats of those greater powers over the enemy before you. Consider this: people in times of war will often refuse to call on foreign nations for aid, even when they desperately need it, because the risk of invoking those stronger countries is higher. Replace country with lich, and you'll understand why no reasonable person would ever use your method of saving a village.

4. The characters themselves: the players are kids, and their small village is being attacked. Why wouldn't they run away? They'd have to be stupid to not recognize that an entire army is above their pay grade, or to have been misled into thinking this army was something they could manage. You misled them, because you didn't have another adventure planned. You made the players bear the consequences of your lack of preparation.

There are other problems too, but these are enough to seriously sink an entire campaign, let alone a single mission. You can certainly explain each and every one of these away, if given enough time, but that isn't a justification. In fact, if there are things you need to come up with convoluted reasons to explain away, that's a very good sign that you as a DM have messed up massively. When a story stops sounding reasonable (distinct from realistic), people stop caring about it. That's the death-knell of a campaign.

You might have noticed that I emphasize your role in these proceedings. That's intentional. Everything here is your own personal failing, and you need to own it. Trying to wave these things away isn't going to help you grow as a DM, and it isn't a healthy way to respond to any problems. Fact is, everyone is criticizing you because you made some pretty bad mistakes. My advice to you? Start by accepting that truth, and then read through everyone's responses with humility and with an eye towards changing yourself. If you do that, you can avoid making these mistakes in future and become a good DM. You've already run sessions that your players enjoyed, so you clearly have it in you. But you can't achieve that by trying to argue against what everyone is trying to say. From now on? Your only response to anyone should be to ask clarifying questions. If you think they're wrong, then what's probably going on is that you simply don't understand what they mean. Ask and find out instead, and educate yourself instead of fortifying your position.

Airk
2016-01-19, 12:37 PM
These are not hyper competent NPCs or something. They are just a regular small frontier town defended by a sheriff and his deputies and a few local hunters and ranch hands with rifles and shotguns. It doesn't take anything special to simply station a ring of guys with shotguns outside the monsters lair or to throw a bunch of dynamite in the entrance and run, anyone can do this unless I go out of my way to cripple them.

So if they're not particularly competent, but you have to come up with irritating ways to deny the players options lest they ask "Why didn't the NPCs already do this?" maybe it's not a good setup? I still don't actually understand why the NPCs can't just all stand around outside the cave and shoot it when it comes out to hunt. Maybe they don't actually know where it lives?



The very first non freeform RPG I run was an AD&D second edition game. The players defeated the boss monster effortlessly by simply running around and shooting arrows and spells at it without ever letting it get into melee range. I mentioned this to our regular DM, one of our teachers (we were 12-13 at the time) and he explained to me that you need to place monsters in appropriate terrain. A creature with a low movement speed and no ranged attacks won't just be out in the middle of a field, it will choose a lair that covers up its weaknesses. That seemed like a good lesson at the time, and you are the first person I can recall talking to that seems to think its a bad idea.

Once again, it seems like everyone is saying one thing, and you are taking away something different. There's nothing wrong with putting a creature in terrain that makes sense, or which gives it an advantage (or, as the case was in the original example, DON'T put a monster in a location that cripples it.) but your situation comes across as contrived and needlessly restrictive. Some of us are actually having problems even imagining what kind of cave meets your bizarre criteria here.



D&D actually does have rules for walking from place to place, and for just about everything a real person could do short of graphic biological functions and purely internal processes.

See, now you are starting to get it! A real person COULD NOT jump to the moon, or convince someone to kill themselves for a gold piece. And the rules don't have to tell you that. So why are you so concerned that suddenly, in some other game system, the rules are the only thing restricting the actions a player can take? Do you have PCs declaring "I grow wings and fly up!" when there's no reason they should be able to do that? Do you think that is because of the rules? Do your players try to tie flasks of flaming oil to arrows with hemp rope and then fire them to the maximum range of their longbow because the rules don't say they can't?

But at the same time, your assertion that D&D has rules for everything is.... come on man. Does D&D have rules for wine tasting? Does it have rules for beating someone in a philosophical debate? Does it have rules for losing an arm? Does it have rules for dissecting monsters? And harvesting their parts? Does it have rules for how long a character can stay conscious while hanging upside down? Does it have rules for alchohol poisoning? What about for juggling? Juggling torches? Estimating the weight of a gold idol? D&D doesn't even have rules for called shots in most editions.

Please kindly dismiss the idea that D&D has rules for all circumstances or even all actions. It is both incorrect and extremely misleading, leading to all sorts of false assumptions. NO GAME has rules for everything.


But yeah, walking from place to place is not extraordinary or contested. You say I am making a straw-man argument, but don't you think comparing walking to actively using a skill which would require a test is a bit of the same?

I'm attempting to use hyperbole to get you to consider the fact that lots of things in D&D are not in fact governed by the rules.



I do not "already know how these things are handled," as I have not read Dungeon World. I asked a friend to let me borrow his copy, but it is packed away somewhere and he says he will get it to me when he finds it.

I meant in D&D. Or GURPS. Or Rolemaster. Or whatever random simulationist system you like. They all use exactly the same method for preventing people from doing things that they obviously can't do, and none of them need to have rules to say it.



I was told in this thread that an action can't fail in Dungeon World, and that running it would teach me how to game without being able to say No to my players. I took this at face value, I have no reason not to, and I am genuinely curious about how the game handles a few of the glaring problems that spring to mind. For example, PCs who attempt ridiculous tasks, or that if something is possible anyone can still succeed on it regardless of their specific methodology or character abilities.

Actions "can't fail" because of the dice. But that doesn't mean that every action gets as far as the dice. In fact, in some ways, Dungeon World is more simulationist tha D&D - because in D&D, the rules say that if you're adjacent to a giant, you can hit it with your sword by rolling an attack roll versus its AC, and if you hit, you always do your damage to its hitpoints, and that if you hit it enough, and it's hitpoints reach zero, it dies, even though all you've ever done is hack away at its foot and ankle, because that's all you can possibly reach. In Dungeon World, a character hacking away at the foot of a giant with a sword is unlikely to even be allowed to roll... because hacking at the giant's big toe isn't engaging it in melee in any meaningful way.



Now you are telling me that the DM can deny a player success, so I am wondering what the actual difference is. This isn't a "straw man" I honestly and legitimately don't see what the difference is between telling a player "No, that's impossible" and "No, that's impossible unless you can make a DC 600 athletics test," in practice they will have exactly the same outcome.

The DM cannot deny the player success on an action they can legitimately take. If a player comes up with a great argument for why the lord should stop sulking and get out there and defend the town, in D&D, he rolls Diplomacy, and when he gets a 2, the GM says "The lord is not convinced, sucks to be you." and that angle dries up. That's not what happens in Dungeon World.

John Longarrow
2016-01-19, 01:03 PM
I didn't work out the exact numbers. The village has a few hundred people in it, while the raiders outnumber them probably 3:1. I doubt there are thousands of them, probably not even one thousand, but they are drawn from all of the indigenous peoples within the local region rather being an army which marched from a great distance away.

But even 100 raiders would be a nearly insurmountable challenge for 3 first level PCs, 10-20 first level commoners, a sheriff, and a handful of animated objects, even with booby traps.


I didn't mention the larger context because it wasn't relevant to the adventure or to the thread, and I only bring it up now because people are making a unfounded assumptions about what exactly is going on. If people are really curious I can write out a long hand copy of my campaign notes, although I am kind of loathe to do so both because it will take a lot of time to write up and because I don't want my players stumbling across it.

Post 36, you posted "It is an army of thousands of individuals in an e6 world."

The larger context is very important to explain many of the motivations going on. If this is the only army, why wouldn't the king help? Based on the larger context it makes a lot more sense that the king can't help.

Kalmageddon
2016-01-19, 01:18 PM
It seems to me that by this point people are just nitpicking on every detail of your campaign.
Let's be honest, it's not the plausibility of an invading army of savage humanoids or the battlefield logistics of said army that has made your players unable to enjoy the session.

You probably shouldn't let your players stall for as long as you did. Communicate OOC more and think about having them solve problems by themselves instead of having to use some outside force.

This is not an absolute criticism, honsetly, outside of the session stalling for too long, I don't see anything bad in how you run the game. So please don't get overwhelmed by all this feedback because bad things might happen to your creativity if you try to listen to every piece of criticism that comes flying your way by people that haven't even played with you once.

Talakeal
2016-01-19, 02:03 PM
1. The attackers' strategy: if the numbers are anything like what you've pointed out, this is a logistical nightmare. Even if the attack succeeded, they'd starve. If they wanted to stay together, then they'd move quickly instead of waiting days to attack one tiny village. Nobody but you can imagine a realistic foe who would make this kind of bizarre move.

This isn't an army in the traditional sense, he is simply calling a raid from all of the creatures that live within a few days of the village. After the raid they will go back to their lives, feeding themselves in the normal fashion plus whatever food stuffs they have raided.

Maybe from a purely realistic perspective the population density is too high, but this is a fantasy world, and they have always had a lot of monsters, including many apex predators, living closely together, so it doesn't seem too far fetched to me.


2. The solution to the assault: the players have to both figure out that they're intended to appeal to some higher power to do the fighting for them and figure out what that power is. When writing an adventure, the fundamental rule is that you give people tasks that you can accomplish. The players trust that they will be able to do what is required of them, and that if something is impossible that it will be appropriately communicated. You broke that trust, which is evidenced by your players' reaction.

Yeah, it looks that way. It just kind of surprises me. So dang many fantasy stories and published modules) are resolved by artifacts and divine intervention and secret missions and all sorts of other plot contrivances that I guess I just assumed it was ok. What baffles me is that I have both played in and run many games like this before and this is the first time it has ever been an issue.

But yeah, communication is absolutely key. I still need to figure out when I need to communicate things though, as if I do it too early I feel that I might be accused of railroading the players or shutting down their ideas, and if I don't see where they are going they might actually be doing something different than I thought.


4. The characters themselves: the players are kids, and their small village is being attacked. Why wouldn't they run away? They'd have to be stupid to not recognize that an entire army is above their pay grade, or to have been misled into thinking this army was something they could manage. You misled them, because you didn't have another adventure planned. You made the players bear the consequences of your lack of preparation.

This accusation comes completely out of left field for me. How did I mislead the players at all? I presented a scenario, they (correctly) knew that it was a winnable one, and they went through with it. It just wasn't winnable through force of arms which I (incorrectly) thought I communicated to them.

You seem to be saying that I intentionally lied to them because I wanted them to think they could defeat the enemy army though force of arms? Why the hell would I do that? That didn't happen, and there is no reason for that to have happened.

As to your last sentence, Are you saying that it is wrong for the DM not to have a backup adventure planned? Because if so I don't think I have ever met a DM who isn't a huge jerk.


As for in-character motivations; one player doesn't like authority and doesn't behave simply to be contrary. The other wants to protect people and was out to prove herself as the biggest thing to over come out of this two horse town. They also had knowledge from the previous adventure that there was something off about the lord, and that he might even be a traitor, so they were not keen on following his orders.

Now, the third player who did want to run, wanted to do so because the PLAYER is a sociopath and doesn't like helping people unless there is a huge reward. He has a long habit in RPGs of stealing from fellow party members and friendly NPCs, and my very first DM back when we were 12 pointed out that he is the kind of guy who wouldn't save a drowning baby unless he was offered a reward. I thought he would have outgrown this sort of behavior, and to some extent he has, but there you have it. So he didn't want to run because he was not having fun or because it was the logical thing for his character to do, he did it because he wanted a payout.

And I never had to say anything to him, "This is the only adventure I have prepared," was never, ever, stated during the session. The other PLAYERS, not me, said they wanted to stick around and see how this goes.


There are other problems too, but these are enough to seriously sink an entire campaign, let alone a single mission. You can certainly explain each and every one of these away, if given enough time, but that isn't a justification. In fact, if there are things you need to come up with convoluted reasons to explain away, that's a very good sign that you as a DM have messed up massively. When a story stops sounding reasonable (distinct from realistic), people stop caring about it. That's the death-knell of a campaign.

Huh. I can see where you are coming from, but I don't think I agree. The first session in a long story arc is usually full of mysteries and things that don't make sense, things that the DM has explanations for but the PCs have yet to discover.

This game is set up as a sort of "conspiracy theory". A whole bunch of seemingly unrelated occurrences are actually part of a larger agenda. When viewed individually they don't make sense, but slowly as the players interact with them they fit together into a whole.

This is, imo, a perfectly valid style of story. My current DM is running a game in this style, and it is by far the best game I have ever played in. It is a giant mystery, and every session something strange happens, and for every answer we get we also uncover two more questions. The mystery keeps us hooked, and we show up every week in the hopes of seeing a little more of the bigger picture.

Now, I may have botched my execution (it is really too soon to tell, especially considering that the problems people are dissecting on the forum weren't even brought up in the actual game and had nothing to do with why it stalled), and I almost certainly won't pull it off as good as my DM is doing it, but the notion that the DM has "messed up massively" is patently absurd.

However, I do fully agree that if there is no bigger picture or explanation, or at least doesn't appear to be, the plot holes will break immersion. That is basically the crux of my argument in this thread when talking to Airk and CombatBunny after all.


You might have noticed that I emphasize your role in these proceedings. That's intentional. Everything here is your own personal failing, and you need to own it. Trying to wave these things away isn't going to help you grow as a DM, and it isn't a healthy way to respond to any problems. Fact is, everyone is criticizing you because you made some pretty bad mistakes. My advice to you? Start by accepting that truth, and then read through everyone's responses with humility and with an eye towards changing yourself. If you do that, you can avoid making these mistakes in future and become a good DM. You've already run sessions that your players enjoyed, so you clearly have it in you. But you can't achieve that by trying to argue against what everyone is trying to say. From now on? Your only response to anyone should be to ask clarifying questions. If you think they're wrong, then what's probably going on is that you simply don't understand what they mean. Ask and find out instead, and educate yourself instead of fortifying your position.

If your goal is to get me to be less defensive, this is probably not the way to go about it. Taking at face value your post is basically saying that I am wrong about everything and the critics are never wrong. You are also telling me that I shouldn't respond even correct misconceptions, clarify my statements or answer other people's questions, which I can't agree with, because I one way dialogue where people just chase their own perceptions regardless of act really isn't helping anyone.

You may have meant to say "You will get a better results if you pretend that.." which I agree with (to an extent, if I accepted every criticism as gospel I would have such a low opinion of myself I would crawl into a corner and die), but the way you phrased it makes it sound like a bunch of absolutes which paint me in the worst light possible and is amongst the nastiest and most condescending things I have read.

But anyway, thank you for taking the time respond. You did make a few good points which will actually help me.


So if they're not particularly competent, but you have to come up with irritating ways to deny the players options lest they ask "Why didn't the NPCs already do this?" maybe it's not a good setup? I still don't actually understand why the NPCs can't just all stand around outside the cave and shoot it when it comes out to hunt. Maybe they don't actually know where it lives?



Once again, it seems like everyone is saying one thing, and you are taking away something different. There's nothing wrong with putting a creature in terrain that makes sense, or which gives it an advantage (or, as the case was in the original example, DON'T put a monster in a location that cripples it.) but your situation comes across as contrived and needlessly restrictive. Some of us are actually having problems even imagining what kind of cave meets your bizarre criteria here.


They can't stand outside and shoot the monster because the cave is located on a cliff face ~10 meters above a rocky narrow trail and only comes out at night. There simply isn't a position to stand where you could get multiple good shots off at it.

But look, I just don't see where you are drawing the line between a legitimate challenge and "irritating ways to deny players options," Heck, right out of the monster manual most creatures have some form of immunity or ability that nullifies certain tactics, I don't see why it is so unreasonable to for the scenario to provide others, assuming of course the DM keeps that in mind when working out the difficulty.

Let me give two extreme examples to show you what I mean:

A kobold is sitting outside the gates of the lords castle and all the knights and men at arms are afraid to leave lest it destroy them, so they call upon a band of adventurers to dispatch it. The adventurers are all first level, while the dozens of knights in the castle average second or third. It is just an ordinary kobold, not tucker's kobold or a half dragon kobold or a kobold with PC levels or anything like that. It might be a perfectly appropriate challenge, but I am going to bet the players will be picking apart the flaws in the setup so hard they won't enjoy the fight even if it is a fair and level appropriate encounter.

The second scenario involves a straight fight between a high level party and the tarrasque. The tarrasque has hundreds of HP and deals enough damage to shred players in melee. It has DR against non magic weapons, typeless regeneration, immunity to fire, poison, disease, energy dragon, and ability damage. It has scent and blind fight to sniff out those hiding. It has high SR and reflects most types of magical direct damage. In many editions it can shoot spines, rush, burrow, or increase gravity so that people can't kite it. It has great cleave frightful presence so you can't bog it down with weak minions. It flat out requires a wish to kill permanently. Now look at the tarrasque and think how many gosh danged strategies its by the book abilities shut down? And yet it has been a staple monster of D&D for 30 years, and many people actually regard it as weaker than it should be because of the few gaps it does have in its defenses and post fixes online to make it tougher.

If you want a game that is either realistic or challenges the players you need to have complications. I fully agree that you can have unfair complications, and it can be frustrating if they come as surprises too often (and are outright cheating, imo, if the DM comes up with them on the fly because they didn't think of the player's plans), but I see absolutely nothing wrong with having a monster who, for whatever reason, has covered its ass against the most straightforward tactics.


See, now you are starting to get it! A real person COULD NOT jump to the moon, or convince someone to kill themselves for a gold piece. And the rules don't have to tell you that. So why are you so concerned that suddenly, in some other game system, the rules are the only thing restricting the actions a player can take? Do you have PCs declaring "I grow wings and fly up!" when there's no reason they should be able to do that? Do you think that is because of the rules? Do your players try to tie flasks of flaming oil to arrows with hemp rope and then fire them to the maximum range of their longbow because the rules don't say they can't?

But at the same time, your assertion that D&D has rules for everything is.... come on man. Does D&D have rules for wine tasting? Does it have rules for beating someone in a philosophical debate? Does it have rules for losing an arm? Does it have rules for dissecting monsters? And harvesting their parts? Does it have rules for how long a character can stay conscious while hanging upside down? Does it have rules for alchohol poisoning? What about for juggling? Juggling torches? Estimating the weight of a gold idol? D&D doesn't even have rules for called shots in most editions.

Please kindly dismiss the idea that D&D has rules for all circumstances or even all actions. It is both incorrect and extremely misleading, leading to all sorts of false assumptions. NO GAME has rules for everything.

I'm attempting to use hyperbole to get you to consider the fact that lots of things in D&D are not in fact governed by the rules.

I meant in D&D. Or GURPS. Or Rolemaster. Or whatever random simulationist system you like. They all use exactly the same method for preventing people from doing things that they obviously can't do, and none of them need to have rules to say it.

Actions "can't fail" because of the dice. But that doesn't mean that every action gets as far as the dice. In fact, in some ways, Dungeon World is more simulationist tha D&D - because in D&D, the rules say that if you're adjacent to a giant, you can hit it with your sword by rolling an attack roll versus its AC, and if you hit, you always do your damage to its hitpoints, and that if you hit it enough, and it's hitpoints reach zero, it dies, even though all you've ever done is hack away at its foot and ankle, because that's all you can possibly reach. In Dungeon World, a character hacking away at the foot of a giant with a sword is unlikely to even be allowed to roll... because hacking at the giant's big toe isn't engaging it in melee in any meaningful way.

The DM cannot deny the player success on an action they can legitimately take. If a player comes up with a great argument for why the lord should stop sulking and get out there and defend the town, in D&D, he rolls Diplomacy, and when he gets a 2, the GM says "The lord is not convinced, sucks to be you." and that angle dries up. That's not what happens in Dungeon World.

As a side note, I said "just about" every situation, and most of those examples you gave D&D does actually have rules for or are very easy rulings to make given the existing rules.

But to the main point, I think we might be arguing past one another. We started talking about Dungeon World because someone said I needed to learn from it as it is a game where the DM can't say "No" to plans which he feels would never work. And I was pointing out that this doesn't appear to be the case.

I seriously doubt dungeon world has moves to allow a creature which is not strong enough to carry you to carry you, or to turn farmers into expert warriors who can defeat 50 men, or to convince the bad guy to give up his plans with no leverage of any kind aside from calling him names. These were the only things I told the players they couldn't do in my actual session, and I don't see how using Dungeon World would have solved any of them.


Bullet-proof world-building isn't that important in typical D&D. It's a good bonus, but players usually care about their current adventures way more. In other words, the most important failure on your part was letting the session stall for a few hours. That's should never happen. The players should always be doing something. That's why you keep a quest giver NPC on standby. If (s)he's not needed, good. However, if the session is turning aimless, the NPC can barge in and tell the players what they should be doing. Maybe it shouldn't be the best option, but it should be something the PCs can do if they run out of other ideas.

Yes, this is a very good point. Thank you.

I remember running the original Dragonlance modules once. At the end of the Silvenesti segment the module states that the ONLY WAY to free the land from the nightmare is to ask Alhanna "What would your father do if he were in your place?". That made for one of the worst gaming sessions of my life because the players couldn't figure out what to do and it dragged on forever because I was afraid to deviate from the module.

And the real kicker is, I knew this might be a problem coming into my current adventure, and I didn't fix it. And for all you keeping score, once again, I totally messed up and it is completely on me.

This thread has been some help, but I still don't know completely how to eliminate things like this. I have had adventures in the past where the players sat around the table paralyzed with indecision about how to solve a "puzzle" that wasn't there, and turn simple "go kill the monster and get the treasure" quests into logistical nightmares that never went anywhere. I posted a thread a year or two ago about my players annoying habit of coming up with a perfect solution almost immediately, but then sitting around debating the issue so long that they have actually forgotten that solution by the time they actually enact their plan.


It seems to me that by this point people are just nitpicking on every detail of your campaign.
Let's be honest, it's not the plausibility of an invading army of savage humanoids or the battlefield logistics of said army that has made your players unable to enjoy the session.

You probably shouldn't let your players stall for as long as you did. Communicate OOC more and think about having them solve problems by themselves instead of having to use some outside force.

This is not an absolute criticism, honestly, outside of the session stalling for too long, I don't see anything bad in how you run the game. So please don't get overwhelmed by all this feedback because bad things might happen to your creativity if you try to listen to every piece of criticism that comes flying your way by people that haven't even played with you once.

Thank you very much Kal. That is very kind of you to say.

John Longarrow
2016-01-19, 02:33 PM
So far it looks like there are 4 issues that you would want to work on.
1) Communications. Make sure your players understand what you are trying to convey.
2) Sharing information. This should be up front, even if you don't think it is directly relevant. Paint the scene at the beginning with as much information as you can. Let the players decide what they really want to pay attention to.
3) Hooks. Early and often. If you don't give the players plenty of reasons to follow your story its hard to get them to. You can use several different hooks to lead to the same place.
4) Scope. Make sure the players and their characters understand the scope of the adventure. If one player thinks this is a 'save the kingdom' adventure when you are running a 'save the town' you get a lot of distractions and misused time.

A way of 'fixing' your adventure is with a short narrative description to (hopefully) get everyone on board with not only your story but what they need to do. One example would be;

"Returning from the dread lich's fastness, you discover your home town is beset by an army of beastly humanoids. Though the town is only a few hundred in number, the host gather before numbers near a thousand. This is even more terrifying when you remember that many other villages have been plagued by similar forces recently, to the extend that the King himself no longer allows his army to face them in the field.

Though your homecoming does shed a brief glimps of hope to your desperate neighbors, little joy is felt as most prepare to evacuate. They have been given three days to depart before the humandoids start burning everything, crops and homes alike. You even hear the sheriff lamenting how your local lord is hold up in his keep, refusing to allow his troops to help. The messenger sent to the king has responded that no help is forth coming. The sheriff has tried to rally the people, but with only a handfull able to wield a blade he knows defeat would be inevitable. With a look of pure desperation he asks if you can find someone, anyone with the power to turn aside these horrid monsters? Though deserted by their lord, can you find another who has the power to stop this rampaging force before they strike?"

Please note: Having DMed for a fairly long time I learned very early to have multiple paths an adventure can take. I don't flesh out every detail but I have more than enough to run a session. After 20 odd years I'd better have something I can call upon. This is also very true of most DMs. The guy I originally played with could spin a new arc off in minutes if that was the way the party was going. Stating otherwise does show you are very new to DMing.

Talakeal
2016-01-19, 02:56 PM
Please note: Having DMed for a fairly long time I learned very early to have multiple paths an adventure can take. I don't flesh out every detail but I have more than enough to run a session. After 20 odd years I'd better have something I can call upon. This is also very true of most DMs. The guy I originally played with could spin a new arc off in minutes if that was the way the party was going. Stating otherwise does show you are very new to DMing.

I agree with pretty much everything you said except for the last bit.

I am not in any way new to DMing, I have been running games fairly regularly for almost 25 years now.

However, I don't see any real correlation between experience and skill. No matter how many lessons I learn or guides I read, the actually quality of the game doesn't really change. I can look back at my old games and point out major flaws, while if I look at my more recent adventures the defects become harder to point out, but the rate of bad sessions to good sessions has, if anything, increased as time goes on.

Honestly, I am not sure if DMing is a skill that one improves with experience. By far the worst DM I have ever played with was also the oldest. He claims to have been DMing for over 40 years and the other day flat out boasted "No one has as much experience as me," and he tells (almost certainly fabricated stories) of how Monte Cook came to him for advice when he was just starting out because he was the most veteran DM he could find short of Gygax himself.

And this guy is TERRIBLE, worse than kids we played with in middle school who gave DMing a try for the very first time. Far worse.



Also, its not that I can't run a session on the fly, its just that generally the more thought someone puts into something the better it is, and the players know this. The players also get invested in the story, they like to see things through, to solve the mysteries and fix the problems, and don't generally like leaving something half done. Being prepared for the players abandoning your adventure and going off on their own isn't necessary because it just isn't a thing that happens in the games I have been a part of.

Airk
2016-01-19, 03:30 PM
However, I do fully agree that if there is no bigger picture or explanation, or at least doesn't appear to be, the plot holes will break immersion. That is basically the crux of my argument in this thread when talking to Airk and CombatBunny after all.

???



They can't stand outside and shoot the monster because the cave is located on a cliff face ~10 meters above a rocky narrow trail and only comes out at night. There simply isn't a position to stand where you could get multiple good shots off at it.

And they can't shoot guns ten meters up? And half a dozen people with rifles shooting it once aren't good enough?

This is the gist: You've said "No no, it's SNIPER PROOF!!!!"
And you keep pulling out stuff that makes it sound like it's NOT.
Stop telling people that it is or is not sniper proofy, and instead say, "It's ten meters up above a narrow, rocky trail" and then let people address THAT. Because that doesn't make it sniper proof.



But look, I just don't see where you are drawing the line between a legitimate challenge and "irritating ways to deny players options," Heck, right out of the monster manual most creatures have some form of immunity or ability that nullifies certain tactics, I don't see why it is so unreasonable to for the scenario to provide others, assuming of course the DM keeps that in mind when working out the difficulty.

My issue above should help clarify this.



The second scenario involves a straight fight between a high level party and the tarrasque. The tarrasque has hundreds of HP and deals enough damage to shred players in melee. It has DR against non magic weapons, typeless regeneration, immunity to fire, poison, disease, energy dragon, and ability damage. It has scent and blind fight to sniff out those hiding. It has high SR and reflects most types of magical direct damage. In many editions it can shoot spines, rush, burrow, or increase gravity so that people can't kite it. It has great cleave frightful presence so you can't bog it down with weak minions. It flat out requires a wish to kill permanently. Now look at the tarrasque and think how many gosh danged strategies its by the book abilities shut down? And yet it has been a staple monster of D&D for 30 years, and many people actually regard it as weaker than it should be because of the few gaps it does have in its defenses and post fixes online to make it tougher.

But do you then take the Tarrasque and start applying things like "No no, you can't do that because >insert sketchy reasoning here<"? No, you do not. QED. :P



If you want a game that is either realistic or challenges the players you need to have complications. I fully agree that you can have unfair complications, and it can be frustrating if they come as surprises too often (and are outright cheating, imo, if the DM comes up with them on the fly because they didn't think of the player's plans), but I see absolutely nothing wrong with having a monster who, for whatever reason, has covered its ass against the most straightforward tactics.

But the monster isn't. YOU are. The way YOU are framing the situation is what makes it "sniper proof" even though the situation as you described it, is not.



As a side note, I said "just about" every situation, and most of those examples you gave D&D does actually have rules for or are very easy rulings to make given the existing rules.

You can make up stuff until your heart's content, but that doesn't mean a system has rules for everything. Or if it does, it means that the game where you flip a coin everytime you try to do something "has rules for everything".



But to the main point, I think we might be arguing past one another. We started talking about Dungeon World because someone said I needed to learn from it as it is a game where the DM can't say "No" to plans which he feels would never work. And I was pointing out that this doesn't appear to be the case.

People have a tendency to misrepresent, but at the same time, you could learn a lot from the game. Because you clearly have issues giving up control of the situation, as evidenced by this entire thread.



I seriously doubt dungeon world has moves to allow a creature which is not strong enough to carry you to carry you, or to turn farmers into expert warriors who can defeat 50 men, or to convince the bad guy to give up his plans with no leverage of any kind aside from calling him names. These were the only things I told the players they couldn't do in my actual session, and I don't see how using Dungeon World would have solved any of them.

It wouldn't. It might, however, have prevented you from getting into that situation in the first place.





This thread has been some help, but I still don't know completely how to eliminate things like this. I have had adventures in the past where the players sat around the table paralyzed with indecision about how to solve a "puzzle" that wasn't there, and turn simple "go kill the monster and get the treasure" quests into logistical nightmares that never went anywhere.

Here's the thing; You ALWAYS know more about the game than your players. And if they find the situation you have presented to be baffling and insoluble, there are only two real possibilities:

A) You have failed at communicating the situation to your players, in which case, you might want to step back and clarify, out of game, "Hey, guys; I didn't think this was going to be a messy situation - what makes you think you need to do X?"
OR
B) It actually IS baffling and insoluble, and only looks otherwise to you because you are standing too close.



I posted a thread a year or two ago about my players annoying habit of coming up with a perfect solution almost immediately, but then sitting around debating the issue so long that they have actually forgotten that solution by the time they actually enact their plan.

One of the jobs of a GM is to not let the players sit around and get bored debating a plan of action.

HammeredWharf
2016-01-19, 03:46 PM
This thread has been some help, but I still don't know completely how to eliminate things like this. I have had adventures in the past where the players sat around the table paralyzed with indecision about how to solve a "puzzle" that wasn't there, and turn simple "go kill the monster and get the treasure" quests into logistical nightmares that never went anywhere. I posted a thread a year or two ago about my players annoying habit of coming up with a perfect solution almost immediately, but then sitting around debating the issue so long that they have actually forgotten that solution by the time they actually enact their plan.

A few ways to speed things up without screaming "GET IT OVER WITH ALREADY" at your players:

- Use Knowledge (and similar) skills. "Your knowledge of the beast tells you this plan is sound." Players trust skills.
- As I mentioned, use an NPC. I usually try to have an NPC at the ready whenever there's a planning session. Your sheriff example is pretty good in this case. The NPC can nudge the players towards a solution if they're acting insecure.
- Summarize their plans and/or option for them. "Alright, so Sam suggested sneaking in, Hans suggested acting as a group of traveling minstrels, and Duke wants to seduce Lady Fabledmounds to see if she can slip you past the guards. Do you go with one of these plans or can you think of a better solution?"
- If they're wasting a huge amount of time on a train of thought that'll never work, describe the process quickly. "You spend some time checking the room (*sigh*) again. You poke walls with a 10' stick, you use Detect Magic, you do every other thing imaginable with Sam's Spot check of 60 and- yes Hans, your impressive Knowledge: Architecture check of 61 and in the end you come to the conclusion that this room is totally, absolutely empty!"
- Just tell them to get it over with. It's not ideal from a storytelling perspective, but better than wasting hours on arguing.

In this campaign, you could've easily used at least the first and third options. Looks like you went with the second option in the end, but inserting it into an ongoing conversation can be awkward, as you probably noticed.

Talakeal
2016-01-19, 03:54 PM
???



And they can't shoot guns ten meters up? And half a dozen people with rifles shooting it once aren't good enough?

This is the gist: You've said "No no, it's SNIPER PROOF!!!!"
And you keep pulling out stuff that makes it sound like it's NOT.
Stop telling people that it is or is not sniper proofy, and instead say, "It's ten meters up above a narrow, rocky trail" and then let people address THAT. Because that doesn't make it sniper proof.



My issue above should help clarify this.



But do you then take the Tarrasque and start applying things like "No no, you can't do that because >insert sketchy reasoning here<"? No, you do not. QED. :P



But the monster isn't. YOU are. The way YOU are framing the situation is what makes it "sniper proof" even though the situation as you described it, is not.



You can make up stuff until your heart's content, but that doesn't mean a system has rules for everything. Or if it does, it means that the game where you flip a coin everytime you try to do something "has rules for everything".



People have a tendency to misrepresent, but at the same time, you could learn a lot from the game. Because you clearly have issues giving up control of the situation, as evidenced by this entire thread.



It wouldn't. It might, however, have prevented you from getting into that situation in the first place.





Here's the thing; You ALWAYS know more about the game than your players. And if they find the situation you have presented to be baffling and insoluble, there are only two real possibilities:

A) You have failed at communicating the situation to your players, in which case, you might want to step back and clarify, out of game, "Hey, guys; I didn't think this was going to be a messy situation - what makes you think you need to do X?"
OR
B) It actually IS baffling and insoluble, and only looks otherwise to you because you are standing too close.



One of the jobs of a GM is to not let the players sit around and get bored debating a plan of action.

At this point I don't really know what you are saying, and it almost seems like you are just playing word games to nitpick my statements and continue an argument that has nothing to do with anything. Could you please provide some concrete statements instead of vague generalizations?


What, exactly, is your problem with the scenario I outlined involving the monster in the cave? It seems like you are simultaneously trying to argue that my scenario is a screw job and not screw job enough.

The only thing I can think that you might be implying is that I am the sort of DM who makes half ass scenarios and then puts in absurd justifications and ret-cons to keep my half assed adventure on the rails.

Could you please give an example of me refusing to give up control, either from this thread or from my good? Because afaik you are the first person to bring it up, and I am really not seeing it.

Also, the players hadn't failed a single skill roll the entire session, so I seriously can't see how using the Dungeon World (or any other) skill system would have solved anything. Can you actually give me the reasoning behind why using it "wouldn't have gotten us there in the first place,"?

Also, yeah, the DM shouldn't let the players do nothing. But HOW do you do that? All of the solutions I can think of either involve creating bigger problems than they solve by taking away player agency, or by being such a whiz at reading people that you can answer all of their questions long before they think to ask them. Or, I guess, just run games with such a low level of difficulty (and convince your players that this is the case) that they never need a plan as they will invariably stumble onto the correct solution.

Airk
2016-01-19, 04:14 PM
At this point I don't really know what you are saying, and it almost seems like you are just playing word games to nitpick my statements and continue an argument that has nothing to do with anything. Could you please provide some concrete statements instead of vague generalizations?

Uh, okay, but it sounds to me like you're getting lost in my specifics rather than in generalities.


What, exactly, is your problem with the scenario I outlined involving the monster in the cave? It seems like you are simultaneously trying to argue that my scenario is a screw job and not screw job enough.

I don't know where you would be getting the latter idea. Can you clarify why you think any of this is "not a screw job enough"? Are you confused that I find your reasoning for why the NPCs couldn't handle this situation to be sketchy? That is NOT a request to make it "harder" but just a suggestion that you might want to find a more elegant solution. Such as, for example, not having a good way of finding the lair of a flying monster, thereby eliminating your need to make a magic, dynamite-proof cave.



The only thing I can think that you might be implying is that I am the sort of DM who makes half ass scenarios and then puts in absurd justifications and ret-cons to keep my half assed adventure on the rails.

I am implying that you seem to have a mental checklist of appropriate solutions and that you tend not to examine your situations to see if other solutions might be valid. This flows from making statements like "sniper proof" that are not being backed up by the fiction you are presenting. You have decided that certain solutions are not valid.



Also, the players hadn't failed a single skill roll the entire session, so I seriously can't see how using the Dungeon World (or any other) skill system would have solved anything. Can you actually give me the reasoning behind why using it "wouldn't have gotten us there in the first place,"?

It's a collection of methods, including but not limited to soft failure states, rolls introducing new elements instead of just shutting down old ones, playing to find out what happens, asking questions, honoring the player's input, and a lot of other things. It's not a short book, I can't summarize everything it does in a couple of sentences.



Also, yeah, the DM shouldn't let the players do nothing. But HOW do you do that?

I dunno, you could try talking to them like other sentient organisms? "Hey, guys? You seem stuck. Can we take a step back and chat?"


All of the solutions I can think of either involve creating bigger problems than they solve by taking away player agency, or by being such a whiz at reading people that you can answer all of their questions long before they think to ask them. Or, I guess, just run games with such a low level of difficulty (and convince your players that this is the case) that they never need a plan as they will invariably stumble onto the correct solution.

Communication works too.

obryn
2016-01-19, 04:42 PM
However, I don't see any real correlation between experience and skill. No matter how many lessons I learn or guides I read, the actually quality of the game doesn't really change. I can look back at my old games and point out major flaws, while if I look at my more recent adventures the defects become harder to point out, but the rate of bad sessions to good sessions has, if anything, increased as time goes on.
It's experience combined with humility and a constant acceptance of feedback. Your players gave you feedback, but upthread you said you'd decided they were 'whiny.' You also said that there's not much different you would have done, this session, even knowing it turned out poorly. That's not really humility or an acceptance to change anything. But posting this thread was at least a good sign.

My advice? If you want to really open your eyes to what's going on in your sessions, try recording them and watching them the next day. You may think you know how you GM, but you really don't until you step outside yourself and watch yourself as an outside observer. See what works and what doesn't from that perspective. See what your players react to - what engages them and what bores them.

Talakeal
2016-01-19, 05:09 PM
Uh, okay, but it sounds to me like you're getting lost in my specifics rather than in generalities.



I don't know where you would be getting the latter idea. Can you clarify why you think any of this is "not a screw job enough"? Are you confused that I find your reasoning for why the NPCs couldn't handle this situation to be sketchy? That is NOT a request to make it "harder" but just a suggestion that you might want to find a more elegant solution. Such as, for example, not having a good way of finding the lair of a flying monster, thereby eliminating your need to make a magic, dynamite-proof cave.



I am implying that you seem to have a mental checklist of appropriate solutions and that you tend not to examine your situations to see if other solutions might be valid. This flows from making statements like "sniper proof" that are not being backed up by the fiction you are presenting. You have decided that certain solutions are not valid.



It's a collection of methods, including but not limited to soft failure states, rolls introducing new elements instead of just shutting down old ones, playing to find out what happens, asking questions, honoring the player's input, and a lot of other things. It's not a short book, I can't summarize everything it does in a couple of sentences.



I dunno, you could try talking to them like other sentient organisms? "Hey, guys? You seem stuck. Can we take a step back and chat?"



Communication works too.

Ok, sorry, my first post on the subject was just a checklist of issues I need to address in making the encounter plausible, I didn't mean for it to be a comprehensive list for a final scenario. It isn't a "magic dynamite proof sniper proof cave", I am sorry if that is what you took away, maybe I wasn't clear enough earlier:

Dynamite would absolutely destroy the cave. The problem is that to get a big enough explosion to destroy the cave, which is half way up a cliff face mind you, the explosion would need to be so large that it could cause an avalanche that could inflict far more damage on the town, which is at the foot of the same cliff, than the monster would inflict.

Also, it is "sniper proof" because it is a cave. You cannot get a clear line of fire to something in a cave unless you are also in a cave (or if they cave doesn't have any twists standing directly in front of it). Simple as that.

Now if the players have an expert sapper or marksman then they can almost certainly find a way around these problems, but it isn't something that farmer bob can accomplish with a shotgun and a handful of explosives.

And also, having the lair be hard to find is, in my opinion, far more likely to cause problems. Remember, the goal is to keep the game from stalling out, and any situation where the players don't know where to go, is at risk for that.



I already agreed that having a finite number of options for the players to choose from and being unwilling to accept anything else is a bad thing. I don't think anyone disagrees with that. It was never my intent to run a game that way, and in the future I will be extra vigilant to make sure I don't. So if that's all there is I guess we can drop this line of discussion.


And yeah, I have said over and over again that more communication is great. The problem is that giving too much information will make the players feel like they don't have a choice.

Hell, I remember the very very first game I ever ran for my dad when I was seven or so. It was a simple dungeon crawl, but he kept getting stuck (being a dad and not a gamer). Like he would come to a locked door and stand there staying at it and I would say something like "Why don't you try picking the lock," or he would come to vine covered wall and I would say "Why don't you climb the vines?" and other simple things. After about ten minutes he quit and said that he didn't enjoy the game because he was more or less just playing Simon says, following my suggestions rather than really participating.

There is a fine line between helping the players and taking away their agency, and trying to find the line is hard. If it were really as simple as "talking to them like other sentient organisms" I don't think this thread , or indeed many other advice threads, would need to exist.


It's experience combined with humility and a constant acceptance of feedback. Your players gave you feedback, but upthread you said you'd decided they were 'whiny.' You also said that there's not much different you would have done, this session, even knowing it turned out poorly. That's not really humility or an acceptance to change anything. But posting this thread was at least a good sign.

My advice? If you want to really open your eyes to what's going on in your sessions, try recording them and watching them the next day. You may think you know how you GM, but you really don't until you step outside yourself and watch yourself as an outside observer. See what works and what doesn't from that perspective. See what your players react to - what engages them and what bores them.

Deciding someone is whiny doesn't mean they don't have a point. Player A said they want to be a hero, that is valuable feedback for future games. Player B said they got discouraged when their first plan failed and then decided to get back at me by stalling the session. The first part of that statement is useful, the second part is most certainly not.*

How is admitting that there is a small but crucial flaw that needs to be fixed a bad thing? The overall adventure seemed fine to both me and the other players except for a few slight hiccups. If I am willing to admit those flaws exist and work to fix them, why is that not enough? I really don't see why it is necessary to see flaws where they don't exist and fix things that aren't broken to display humility or acceptance to change.


You know, I actually thought about recording the session, but it was just a logistical nightmare. How would one actually go about managing it?



*: True story. When we were in high school this player would actually pull out a pocket knife and carve up my mother's furniture during games. He claimed that it was because he did it to amuse himself, and that if I didn't like it I should make sure my game was engaging enough that he never got bored. Now, that certainly helped me learn how to engage him and keep the game flowing, but I don't think anyone would agree that it wasn't an inappropriate response. He has grown up a LOT since then, but he still gets really vindictive when he doesn't get his way.

LnGrrrR
2016-01-19, 05:53 PM
It seems to me that by this point people are just nitpicking on every detail of your campaign.
Let's be honest, it's not the plausibility of an invading army of savage humanoids or the battlefield logistics of said army that has made your players unable to enjoy the session.

You probably shouldn't let your players stall for as long as you did. Communicate OOC more and think about having them solve problems by themselves instead of having to use some outside force.

This is not an absolute criticism, honsetly, outside of the session stalling for too long, I don't see anything bad in how you run the game. So please don't get overwhelmed by all this feedback because bad things might happen to your creativity if you try to listen to every piece of criticism that comes flying your way by people that haven't even played with you once.

No, not at all. Usually people feel railroaded because they try something that should make sense, but the DM won't allow it for a reason that doesn't seem to make sense. A world has to make sense. So look at this adventure.

A huge amount of uncivilized monsters trying to fight back against civilization... but they're civilized enough to let the PCs go after a stern talking to, civilized enough to wait, and civilized enough not to want to have TOO many casualties.

The PCs are expected to fight against this huge army, even though they're relatively low level, and they have no hope of defeating it themselves EVEN WITH booby traps, locals, etc etc. The army is, in fact, so huge that even the veterans were like, "F this, I'm out." and most people had evacuated already. But they're forced to fight there because the DM was pretty much saying they had to.

Look at the help that the DM put out there... a lich, a dragon, and a ghost army. When adventurers are thinking, "Hey we need someone to save us", ghosts, dragons and liches aren't usually the first thing to come to mind. You know what likely would be? THE KING OF THAT AREA. Who doesn't seem to care that a bunch of his taxpaying citizens are being forced from their home.

So these monsters all get this notice they are supposed to attack this village. Ok, cool. They're mind-controlled then by this god, I assume? They don't seem to get a lot out of it. And frankly, if you have that many overwhelming numbers, I don't see why you'd just take over one village instead of rampaging through, like Mongol hordes, or taking a bigger target like the kingdom. It'd be like an NFL QB going to the local high school and competing in a Passing competition.

That's not nitpicking. A player won't mind a dichotomy or two. But when the world is full of these non-intuitive interactions, it makes it really hard to suss out what they're supposed to be doing.


Ok, on another topic, if the game stalls, just inject some action into it. If it's a puzzle (and note, puzzles kind of suck because it's usually player using OOC intelligence to figure it out... it's hard to get that to work just right), then have them roll intelligence or wisdom or whatever for a clue. Or throw a monster in there. Or have an NPC barge in with the answer, completely unexpected by the current party. You're the DM. The players can't do that, but you can.

Talakeal
2016-01-19, 06:04 PM
No, not at all. Usually people feel railroaded because they try something that should make sense, but the DM won't allow it for a reason that doesn't seem to make sense. A world has to make sense.

Agree 110%.

Although on the flip side, what do you call it when the PCs try something that shouldn't work but the DM allows it anyway?


A huge amount of uncivilized monsters trying to fight back against civilization... but they're civilized enough to let the PCs go after a stern talking to, civilized enough to wait, and civilized enough not to want to have TOO many casualties.

The PCs are expected to fight against this huge army, even though they're relatively low level, and they have no hope of defeating it themselves EVEN WITH booby traps, locals, etc etc. The army is, in fact, so huge that even the veterans were like, "F this, I'm out." and most people had evacuated already. But they're forced to fight there because the DM was pretty much saying they had to.

Look at the help that the DM put out there... a lich, a dragon, and a ghost army. When adventurers are thinking, "Hey we need someone to save us", ghosts, dragons and liches aren't usually the first thing to come to mind. You know what likely would be? THE KING OF THAT AREA. Who doesn't seem to care that a bunch of his taxpaying citizens are being forced from their home.

So these monsters all get this notice they are supposed to attack this village. Ok, cool. They're mind-controlled then by this god, I assume? They don't seem to get a lot out of it. And frankly, if you have that many overwhelming numbers, I don't see why you'd just take over one village instead of rampaging through, like Mongol hordes, or taking a bigger target like the kingdom. It'd be like an NFL QB going to the local high school and competing in a Passing competition.

That's not nitpicking. A player won't mind a dichotomy or two. But when the world is full of these non-intuitive interactions, it makes it really hard to suss out what they're supposed to be doing.

Are these rhetorical examples or do you actually want me to answer these?

I really don't think the problem in the adventure was that the players were to distracted by minor plot holes to focus on the adventure, and if it was I would think at least one of them would have brought it up to me either during the session or afterwards.

LnGrrrR
2016-01-19, 06:14 PM
Agree 110%.

Although on the flip side, what do you call it when the PCs try something that shouldn't work but the DM allows it anyway?



I have a sound explanation for every point you raise. But a people have already stated, me defending my ideas to strangers on the internet is not productive, so I am not going to waste both of our time debating each point with you.

However, I will say that none of my players said anything about any of this either during or after the game session. One would think that if it was truly as immersion breaking as you are making it out to be they would have at least brought it up?

Talakeal, I understand YOU have a reason for those points. But if they're not intuitive to us, they're probably not intuitive to the player either. And while the players not might have brought it up in exactly this format, the things you told us about their reactions shows that they WERE thinking it.

For instance, they went to try to talk the avatar out of it, right? Because the army didn't portray itself as a bunch of uncivilized savages; they portrayed themselves as an army. They were using planning/tactics/etc. So it's reasonable to think they might be able to convince the leader.


You said Player B wanted you to railroad more. That's because he tried a few things that made sense to him and they were all shut down, so why should he bother suggesting more things to be shot down? In the same sense, Player C stated that he thought you railroaded too much. Why? Because all the things he thought of that made sense to him were all shut down. You thought they had the opposite complaint, but really, Players B and C have the SAME complaint, but different suggestions on how to work with it. Player B thought you should have told them outright what to do, and Player C said you should have allowed other ideas; either would have worked.

The players probably aren't going to bring those up, because by themselves, they don't really amount to much. That's more of a structural problem; if the world doesn't work like it's supposed to, the player won't know which way to go. You said there was an hour where they were paralyzed by indecision... why do you think that is? I'm guessing it's because they didn't know how they could approach the problem, when the bits weren't adding up to make sense, and what they DID try to do that made sense to them was overturned.

Little things can add up to bigger issues. (On rereading, the one thing that probably is nitpicking is the "why this village", as you could probably get away with that anyways. "Who knows, crazy God, this is it". Most players will accept that.)

BRC
2016-01-19, 06:25 PM
If the Players didn't have any problems with the scenario, it's not a problem. There is a big army trying to cause a famine by conquering farming villages, but allows the villagers ample time to escape.

Now that Talakeal has said their piece, I'm going to say mine.
Here is how I would run a "Go get help to save the village" adventure. I'm not trying to criticize you for NOT doing this, just saying how I would do it.

1) Make it clear that Help is needed. Don't have the army give three days. Have it simply move in and occupy the town with overwhelming force. The PCs and some villagers escape, but the Village has been taken. The Villain is using it as a base camp to launch raids against nearby farms, while forcing the villagers to keep farming in order to feed his armies, while still depriving the Kingdom of food. It's more than a little artificial to have the villain intentionally give the PC's three days to stop him. If you really want that ticking clock, say that the Villain is waiting for the villagers to finish harvesting their crops (his army needs food too) before he destroys the village and moves on.

2) If you're not going to run a Sandbox, don't run a sandbox. Instead, frame the general solution, and focus on building a good adventure with lots of player agency around that. It's better to make one good adventure than three mediocre ones. "Choose one of three Macguffins" is not exactly engaging gameplay.

Of the three options you presented, the Dragon is the one that makes the most sense, since it does not rely on controlling some malevolent entity (or motivating a local Lord who can apparently help defeat an army the King's forces cannot) Have the Village Elder say that "Long ago a kind Dragon used to protect these lands, but he vanished. In my youth we used to seek his lair, but we were never brave enough to venture into the Caves we found."
Now, the adventure is about finding this Dragon's lair, figuring out what happened to the Dragon, and then freeing it. Lets say the Dragon is bound by a spell placed by the Lich. You then have a nice old-fashioned dungeon crawl through the Dragon's lair, battling the Lich's minions and freeing the Dragon (Maybe the dragon is just in a magical sleep, and the PC's need to deal some damage to it in order to wake it up).

3) Now that the Dragon is on their side, let the PCs partake in the final battle. While the Dragon attacks from the sky, the PCs rally what allies they have to hunt down the villain/his lieutenants, free captured villagers, destroy siege weapons, and drive enemies out of important structures (So the Dragon can kill the enemies without destroying the structure.) This is an excellent time for open-ended gameplay. The PC's have a clear, immediate goal (here is a village full of baddies and targets), and can set about it with whatever methods they want. The Bulk of the fighting is being done by the Dragon, so the scale of the threat remains, but the PC's still get to participate in the battle in a crucial way. The Players get to flex their tactical thinking skills as they plan their assault on the village in coordination with the Dragon, but just about all the applicable solutions are Ordinary solutions, and there are few plans that will NOT help them out in some way. Also, letting the PC's plan out the Dragon's attacks, incorporating it into their battle plan, makes them feel responsible for its actions. Thus, they feel like Heroes, rather than sidekicks to the REAL power in the battle.

obryn
2016-01-19, 06:27 PM
Deciding someone is whiny doesn't mean they don't have a point. Player A said they want to be a hero, that is valuable feedback for future games. Player B said they got discouraged when their first plan failed and then decided to get back at me by stalling the session. The first part of that statement is useful, the second part is most certainly not.*

How is admitting that there is a small but crucial flaw that needs to be fixed a bad thing? The overall adventure seemed fine to both me and the other players except for a few slight hiccups. If I am willing to admit those flaws exist and work to fix them, why is that not enough? I really don't see why it is necessary to see flaws where they don't exist and fix things that aren't broken to display humility or acceptance to change.
Most of this thread is either you arguing that there weren't may problems, or re-explaining something. No, it doesn't come across as humble. :)


You know, I actually thought about recording the session, but it was just a logistical nightmare. How would one actually go about managing it?
Same as anything else. Set up the camera with a stand or tripod. Don't worry about anything else, just make sure you can see the table.


*: True story. When we were in high school this player would actually pull out a pocket knife and carve up my mother's furniture during games. He claimed that it was because he did it to amuse himself, and that if I didn't like it I should make sure my game was engaging enough that he never got bored. Now, that certainly helped me learn how to engage him and keep the game flowing, but I don't think anyone would agree that it wasn't an inappropriate response. He has grown up a LOT since then, but he still gets really vindictive when he doesn't get his way.
This is awful. Why wasn't this person kicked out long before? I struggle to find a reason anyone should tolerate property damage.

[QUOTE=Talakeal;20319041]Agree 110%.

Although on the flip side, what do you call it when the PCs try something that shouldn't work but the DM allows it anyway?[quote]
I think you have way too pessimistic a view of what could or couldn't work. In short, don't look for reasons to shoot the players' ideas down, and don't make a scenario so restrictive that this will come up so much.

CombatBunny
2016-01-19, 07:05 PM
So, you have to decide if you want to give your players a challenge or you want them to follow a script.

You said that you don’t like just taking the ideas of your players and make them succeed regardless of how irrational they are, because that’s not the way that you game and you like challenges and you like your players to think and reflect their moves.

Now then, what challenge does the following entails?

Player: I try this.

GM (OOC): NO! Because X and Y; wouldn’t it be better to do Z (Where Z is five options that behave similar)?

Player: I try that.

GM (OCC): No! Because Logics and mathematics; but hey, doing Z doesn't sounds that wacky, right?

Player: Ok, I think I feel like doing Z! Thank you heavenly voice from the sky that guides my decisions * While the PC waves to the clouds in gratitude *

Let them try their plans, let them fail; from the ashes they could start a new adventure of vengeance against the invaders or something else. A defeat in the party’s side, shouldn’t necessary mean the end of the game.

You would say that if you allow that, the game would end too soon because you didn’t planned any backup plan or any other adventure. Then you are lying when you say that there is a challenge, because you will clutch with your nails to your prepared material because it’s what you've planned. From that perspective, there is no challenge at all, no matter what the players do, the session will last whatever time you had decided it should last and the material you prepared would be consumed, no matter what paths do the player’s try to take. Given that, there is no challenge, you just have to wait for the final encounter, and that’s probably the only one that will count.

I repeat, are you looking to challenge your players? Or are you looking for them to fulfill your script?

Talakeal
2016-01-19, 07:13 PM
If the Players didn't have any problems with the scenario, it's not a problem. There is a big army trying to cause a famine by conquering farming villages, but allows the villagers ample time to escape.

Now that Talakeal has said their piece, I'm going to say mine.
Here is how I would run a "Go get help to save the village" adventure. I'm not trying to criticize you for NOT doing this, just saying how I would do it.

1) Make it clear that Help is needed. Don't have the army give three days. Have it simply move in and occupy the town with overwhelming force. The PCs and some villagers escape, but the Village has been taken. The Villain is using it as a base camp to launch raids against nearby farms, while forcing the villagers to keep farming in order to feed his armies, while still depriving the Kingdom of food. It's more than a little artificial to have the villain intentionally give the PC's three days to stop him. If you really want that ticking clock, say that the Villain is waiting for the villagers to finish harvesting their crops (his army needs food too) before he destroys the village and moves on.

2) If you're not going to run a Sandbox, don't run a sandbox. Instead, frame the general solution, and focus on building a good adventure with lots of player agency around that. It's better to make one good adventure than three mediocre ones. "Choose one of three Macguffins" is not exactly engaging gameplay.

Of the three options you presented, the Dragon is the one that makes the most sense, since it does not rely on controlling some malevolent entity (or motivating a local Lord who can apparently help defeat an army the King's forces cannot) Have the Village Elder say that "Long ago a kind Dragon used to protect these lands, but he vanished. In my youth we used to seek his lair, but we were never brave enough to venture into the Caves we found."
Now, the adventure is about finding this Dragon's lair, figuring out what happened to the Dragon, and then freeing it. Lets say the Dragon is bound by a spell placed by the Lich. You then have a nice old-fashioned dungeon crawl through the Dragon's lair, battling the Lich's minions and freeing the Dragon (Maybe the dragon is just in a magical sleep, and the PC's need to deal some damage to it in order to wake it up).

3) Now that the Dragon is on their side, let the PCs partake in the final battle. While the Dragon attacks from the sky, the PCs rally what allies they have to hunt down the villain/his lieutenants, free captured villagers, destroy siege weapons, and drive enemies out of important structures (So the Dragon can kill the enemies without destroying the structure.) This is an excellent time for open-ended gameplay. The PC's have a clear, immediate goal (here is a village full of baddies and targets), and can set about it with whatever methods they want. The Bulk of the fighting is being done by the Dragon, so the scale of the threat remains, but the PC's still get to participate in the battle in a crucial way. The Players get to flex their tactical thinking skills as they plan their assault on the village in coordination with the Dragon, but just about all the applicable solutions are Ordinary solutions, and there are few plans that will NOT help them out in some way. Also, letting the PC's plan out the Dragon's attacks, incorporating it into their battle plan, makes them feel responsible for its actions. Thus, they feel like Heroes, rather than sidekicks to the REAL power in the battle.

Some good ideas in here. I wish I had asked you about it before running the session :smallsmile:

One little aside if I may, I am not sure where you are getting "three options," there were a lot more than three described in my OP. In reality they were all just different paths to the same McGuffin, the ghost army, which had been the focus of the entire previous day's adventure and so was still fresh in the player's minds and hardly the out of the blue notion it might seem to be in a casual telling.

Which is of course not to say I would have gone out of my way to shoot down plans that did not involve the ghost army. But plans like getting a tinker, a sheriff, six animated swords, and twenty farmers to defeat an army of hundreds if not thousands of raiders don't need me to shoot them down, just to "let the dice fall where they may."

John Longarrow
2016-01-19, 07:20 PM
*: True story. When we were in high school this player would actually pull out a pocket knife and carve up my mother's furniture during games. He claimed that it was because he did it to amuse himself, and that if I didn't like it I should make sure my game was engaging enough that he never got bored. Now, that certainly helped me learn how to engage him and keep the game flowing, but I don't think anyone would agree that it wasn't an inappropriate response. He has grown up a LOT since then, but he still gets really vindictive when he doesn't get his way.

I'm popping out of this thread. If you can't see how this is a problem I can't explain it to you here.

CombatBunny
2016-01-19, 07:24 PM
I'm popping out of this thread. If you can't see how this is a problem I can't explain it to you here.

I do agree. Don't take it personal Talakeal, but I wouldn't let in my house anyone who does that. I would hardly call a friend someone that disrespects my home so nastily.

Talakeal
2016-01-19, 07:29 PM
I'm popping out of this thread. If you can't see how this is a problem I can't explain it to you here.

This happened 15 years ago. I was absolutely a HUGE problem then and everyone could see it, but that was a long time ago and only tangentially related to the current situation; I only bring it up as an example of someone who had a legitimate grip but an illegitimate reaction to it.


You would say that if you allow that, the game would end too soon because you didn’t planned any backup plan or any other adventure. Then you are lying when you say that there is a challenge, because you will clutch with your nails to your prepared material because it’s what you planned. From that perspective, there is no challenge at all, no matter what the players do, the session will last whatever time you had decided it should last and the material you prepared would be consumed, no matter what paths do the player’s try to take. Given that, there is no challenge, you just have to wait for the final encounter, and that’s probably the only one that will count.

I repeat again, are you looking to challenge your players? Or are you looking for them to fulfill your script?

No. Just no.

As I said earlier in the thread, the illusion of challenge is one of my biggest gripes against my last DM, where he would pull nonsense out to save us because us failing would break up the plot to his adventure. My players are absolutely allowed to fail.

Note however that fail does not mean "Everyone dies, game over, go home, campaign ends," it can be as simple as not achieving a goal or getting a reward, it can involve being captured, suffering an injury, losing an item, or simply allowing the villain to advance.

I have abandoned my "script" countless times. Hell, even in this session there were 3-4 major "scenes" which got dropped because the players didn't follow the hooks and just as many that were added because the players went off in a direction they hadn't anticipated.

In the past I have abandoned massive plot arcs and entire adventures because of the players actions. Again, I know I am being "overly defensive," but your accusations are simply not true.

Now, I will admit that I could be more flexible and open to change, but I am hardly the controlling taskmaster you are projecting onto me, and I don't even have to look outside of the adventure in question to prove it.

BRC
2016-01-19, 07:44 PM
Some good ideas in here. I wish I had asked you about it before running the session :smallsmile:

One little aside if I may, I am not sure where you are getting "three options," there were a lot more than three described in my OP. In reality they were all just different paths to the same McGuffin, the ghost army, which had been the focus of the entire previous day's adventure and so was still fresh in the player's minds and hardly the out of the blue notion it might seem to be in a casual telling.

Which is of course not to say I would have gone out of my way to shoot down plans that did not involve the ghost army. But plans like getting a tinker, a sheriff, six animated swords, and twenty farmers to defeat an army of hundreds if not thousands of raiders don't need me to shoot them down, just to "let the dice fall where they may."

The Lich, The Ghost Army, and the Dragon were the three 'Go Get help" Macguffins that I remember. My point remains the same, if the goal of the adventure is to go get a macguffin, that's fine, but it should be clear that the Macguffin is an option, and that it will solve the problem you are facing.

The issue with the Ghost Army is that there are too many unknowns. They don't know if it CAN Help them (Maybe they're bound to one place?), and unless I'm missing something, they had no way to know how, or even if, they could control them.

The Benevolent Dragon is a lot more straightforward. But, like I said, that was just my suggestion. You could replace the benevolent Dragon with the controllable lich, or ghost army, or friendly druid, or secret underground army of flamethrower-wielding kobolds, or whatever.

The point is, if the Adventure is "Go Get Help", then going to get help should BE an adventure, with challenges and danger and thrilling heroics. I don't know what your adventure actually entailed as far as blackmailing the Lich was concerned, but "We decide to do X" is not much of a session. For that same reason, picking between multiple extraordinary solutions is often a waste of time. It's a LOT more work for the GM, who has to plan out multiple adventure paths, most of which will not get used, all to offer the players their choice after two minutes of debate.

Open Gameplay is much easier, and more rewarding, when you are letting players find Ordinary solutions to their problems. Extraordinary solutions should be loud, clear, explicit, and an adventure in and of themselves. When planning a session, always keep an eye out for interesting scenarios with a lot of potential Ordinary solutions. That's where the meat of a good session lives, in making a lot of small plans that come together, rather than one big sweeping decision.

Talakeal
2016-01-19, 07:52 PM
The Lich, The Ghost Army, and the Dragon were the three 'Go Get help" Macguffins that I remember. My point remains the same, if the goal of the adventure is to go get a macguffin, that's fine, but it should be clear that the Macguffin is an option, and that it will solve the problem you are facing.

The issue with the Ghost Army is that there are too many unknowns. They don't know if it CAN Help them (Maybe they're bound to one place?), and unless I'm missing something, they had no way to know how, or even if, they could control them.

The Benevolent Dragon is a lot more straightforward. But, like I said, that was just my suggestion. You could replace the benevolent Dragon with the controllable lich, or ghost army, or friendly druid, or secret underground army of flamethrower-wielding kobolds, or whatever.

The point is, if the Adventure is "Go Get Help", then going to get help should BE an adventure, with challenges and danger and thrilling heroics. I don't know what your adventure actually entailed as far as blackmailing the Lich was concerned, but "We decide to do X" is not much of a session. For that same reason, picking between multiple extraordinary solutions is often a waste of time. It's a LOT more work for the GM, who has to plan out multiple adventure paths, most of which will not get used, all to offer the players their choice after two minutes of debate.

Open Gameplay is much easier, and more rewarding, when you are letting players find Ordinary solutions to their problems. Extraordinary solutions should be loud, clear, explicit, and an adventure in and of themselves. When planning a session, always keep an eye out for interesting scenarios with a lot of potential Ordinary solutions. That's where the meat of a good session lives, in making a lot of small plans that come together, rather than one big sweeping decision.

Agreed. Thanks.

obryn
2016-01-20, 09:47 AM
As I said earlier in the thread, the illusion of challenge is one of my biggest gripes against my last DM, where he would pull nonsense out to save us because us failing would break up the plot to his adventure. My players are absolutely allowed to fail.
I think you're mixing up two different things. Allowing the players to fail is great and necessary. But it's not at odds with anything else anyone has said, here. It's not at odds with fail-forward adventure design, nor is it at odds with a 'say yes or roll the dice' GMing style.

Being open to your players' ideas doesn't make challenges illusory.

OldTrees1
2016-01-20, 10:14 AM
I think you're mixing up two different things. Allowing the players to fail is great and necessary. But it's not at odds with anything else anyone has said, here. It's not at odds with fail-forward adventure design, nor is it at odds with a 'say yes or roll the dice' GMing style.

Being open to your players' ideas doesn't make challenges illusory.

Well, fail-forward does entail the PCs can only lose battles but cannot lose the war (since fail-forward is every lost battle should forward the PCs towards another chance at winning the war). This could be something Talakeal would want to avoid for awhile (or it could be something he needs to embrace to avoid both the extremes of sandbox and railroading).

That said, a DM need to be open to player's ideas provided they make sense. (Aka the skill of "See what the players saw that you didn't see")

obryn
2016-01-20, 10:51 AM
Well, fail-forward does entail the PCs can only lose battles but cannot lose the war (since fail-forward is every lost battle should forward the PCs towards another chance at winning the war). This could be something Talakeal would want to avoid for awhile (or it could be something he needs to embrace to avoid both the extremes of sandbox and railroading).

That said, a DM need to be open to player's ideas provided they make sense. (Aka the skill of "See what the players saw that you didn't see")
The general philosophy, as I understand it at least, is simply that failure should be interesting. You can absolutely lose the 'war' - it's just that losing the war shouldn't be the end of the story. Losing the war should move the campaign forward in other, interesting directions as now, you need to deal with a world where the big bad has already won.

Apricot
2016-01-20, 11:37 AM
The general philosophy, as I understand it at least, is simply that failure should be interesting. You can absolutely lose the 'war' - it's just that losing the war shouldn't be the end of the story. Losing the war should move the campaign forward in other, interesting directions as now, you need to deal with a world where the big bad has already won.

Agreed. It also has the side benefit of all but forcing good DMing habits: planning out flexible settings, limiting the scope of the big bad, and avoiding the save/load pass/fail style typical of CRPGs. It even makes the PCs more amenable to not getting everything they want and to picking up the pieces after catastrophe, which is a fantastic real-world skill as well. Very positive, overall.

obryn
2016-01-20, 11:41 AM
Agreed. It also has the side benefit of all but forcing good DMing habits: planning out flexible settings, limiting the scope of the big bad, and avoiding the save/load pass/fail style typical of CRPGs. It even makes the PCs more amenable to not getting everything they want and to picking up the pieces after catastrophe, which is a fantastic real-world skill as well. Very positive, overall.
Yep. It also pushes a GM to think of "failure" in ways other than TPK and character deaths, which is also another very important lesson.

OldTrees1
2016-01-20, 11:53 AM
The general philosophy, as I understand it at least, is simply that failure should be interesting. You can absolutely lose the 'war' - it's just that losing the war shouldn't be the end of the story. Losing the war should move the campaign forward in other, interesting directions as now, you need to deal with a world where the big bad has already won.

The general philosophy, as I understand it at least, is simply that failure should still move the campaign forward albeit via another direction. As such each loss turns into a lost 'battle' rather than a lost 'war'. If the BBEG succeeded in their plan, then the PCs stumble on leads for a resistance/revolution/exodus (thus continuing to try to not lose the 'war').

Where your definition does not include mine, my prior comments should be seen as not applicable.

Talakeal
2016-01-20, 12:38 PM
I think you're mixing up two different things. Allowing the players to fail is great and necessary. But it's not at odds with anything else anyone has said, here. It's not at odds with fail-forward adventure design, nor is it at odds with a 'say yes or roll the dice' GMing style.

Being open to your players' ideas doesn't make challenges illusory.

My statement was a direct response to Combat Bunny's:

"You would say that if you allow that, the game would end too soon because you didn’t planned any backup plan or any other adventure. Then you are lying when you say that there is a challenge, because you will clutch with your nails to your prepared material because it’s what you've planned. From that perspective, there is no challenge at all, no matter what the players do, the session will last whatever time you had decided it should last and the material you prepared would be consumed, no matter what paths do the player’s try to take. Given that, there is no challenge, you just have to wait for the final encounter, and that’s probably the only one that will count. I repeat, are you looking to challenge your players? Or are you looking for them to fulfill your script?"


Agreed. It also has the side benefit of all but forcing good DMing habits: planning out flexible settings, limiting the scope of the big bad, and avoiding the save/load pass/fail style typical of CRPGs. It even makes the PCs more amenable to not getting everything they want and to picking up the pieces after catastrophe, which is a fantastic real-world skill as well. Very positive, overall.

Two questions if I may:

What do you mean by save/load style in a tabletop? Do you mean letting players do "tap backs" if they make a mistake or what?

Could we talk more about limiting the scope of the big bad? In my experience for a good story you build up the villain as much as you can so that the hero's victory seems all the more satisfying and, well, heroic. Why do you think it is helpful to limit the villain's scope and what does that entail?

CombatBunny
2016-01-20, 12:42 PM
The general philosophy, as I understand it at least, is simply that failure should still move the campaign forward albeit via another direction. As such each loss turns into a lost 'battle' rather than a lost 'war'. If the BBEG succeeded in their plan, then the PCs stumble on leads for a resistance/revolution/exodus (thus continuing to try to not lose the 'war').

Where your definition does not include mine, my prior comments should be seen as not applicable.

In general those kind of games respond to dramatic needs rather than simulation or realism (in a sort of way that resembles books or movies).

So the war can be lost, but just if losing the war would help to create a dramatic moment or is meant to be the climax of the story. The stakes are usually defined beforehand, so for example if the PCs pick up a fight with a bum, it can be stated that the stakes are just trying to prove superiority.

In the other hand if the players are amidst a climatic encounter, the GM states that the stakes are high on this one because the objective of each band is “destroy the opponent”.

In simulation games you identify the situation and then apply the corresponding mechanic; in narrative games you describe your scene and then you choose which mechanic would be more dramatic to use (story over realism). That way of gaming is meant to prevent odd situations or scenarios such as a TPK by an uninteresting NPC for example.

Said that, narrative systems aren’t worse or better than simulation ones, they have their benefits and their flaws, but they are aimed mostly for players who rather experience a collaborative story than a collaborative world. Both systems create worlds and stories, but they favor one over the other.

In Simulation you create challenges based on the player's level and experience

In Narrative you create challenges based on if the challenge would be exciting to happen or not (Just like writters don't stop to think if Harry Potter has an adequate power level to confront a Kerberus or a Giant.)

obryn
2016-01-20, 01:05 PM
The general philosophy, as I understand it at least, is simply that failure should still move the campaign forward albeit via another direction. As such each loss turns into a lost 'battle' rather than a lost 'war'. If the BBEG succeeded in their plan, then the PCs stumble on leads for a resistance/revolution/exodus (thus continuing to try to not lose the 'war').

Where your definition does not include mine, my prior comments should be seen as not applicable.
The difference is in the word, "forward" and whether or not that "forward" is toward something specific.

If there's no pre-determined end state, you don't run into an inability to fail or lose. No matter what happens - as long as you don't just end the campaign or end interesting momentum - failing forward just means making failure as interesting as success (though not as rewarding). With this guiding philosophy, you're a lot less likely to TPK the party, but their successes and failures change the direction of the campaign.

If there is a pre-determined end state, failures along the way could lead to the PCs having fewer allies or resources, less information, etc., while still ending around the same spot. This is pretty common in, say, adventure paths or other long adventures. This isn't, IMO, the design a home-built campaign should strive towards, and it can start to feel kinda railroady, but some tables work best like this and to each their own.

It seems like Takaleal wanted to work towards the first and may have ended up in the second. :smallsmile:

LnGrrrR
2016-01-20, 01:18 PM
Could we talk more about limiting the scope of the big bad? In my experience for a good story you build up the villain as much as you can so that the hero's victory seems all the more satisfying and, well, heroic. Why do you think it is helpful to limit the villain's scope and what does that entail?

So the victory is more realistic. It just doesn't make sense that these brand new adventurers beat some huge big bad. It also wouldn't be as satisfying as a hard fought victory after a lengthy amount of time.

In most stories, the protagonist doesn't defeat the BBEG immediately. He takes down his help, or gathers allies/equipment, etc etc.

Talakeal
2016-01-20, 01:33 PM
So the victory is more realistic. It just doesn't make sense that these brand new adventurers beat some huge big bad. It also wouldn't be as satisfying as a hard fought victory after a lengthy amount of time.

In most stories, the protagonist doesn't defeat the BBEG immediately. He takes down his help, or gathers allies/equipment, etc etc.

Oh, I am well aware of the perils of trying to introduce a big bad immediately (although I think it is a matter of execution rather than concept), I am just wondering about why it is beneficial to limit the villain in general.

JAL_1138
2016-01-20, 01:46 PM
You can feel like a big hero without Saving The World from a megavillain. Victories on a personal scale with a lot of investment can feel much more satisfying than calling on aid to defeat the faceless horde or the unstoppable super-enemy. Think about Batman going up against the Joker, for example. "Building up a villain" doesn't have to be with raw power or sheer scale-of-threat.

Moriarty was a great nemesis for Holmes because he was clever, charismatic, had plausible deniability, had good PR with the public which made him hard to touch, and was a step ahead of Holmes much of the time, not because he commanded vast powerful armies or could blow up London or some such.

The Glyphstone
2016-01-20, 01:46 PM
Because, ultimately, his job. his purpose in the over-arching narrative, is to be defeated, or to at least be defeatable. He's the bad guy, and the players are the good guys. Over-correcting too far in one direction makes him weak and thus unsatisfying to defeat, because it didn't take effort and made for a bad story. But over-correcting the other way is also dangerous, because if he's too powerful the heroes cannot defeat him, which also makes for a bad story (unless The Villain Wins is the story you wanted). It's a balancing act.

obryn
2016-01-20, 01:46 PM
Oh, I am well aware of the perils of trying to introduce a big bad immediately (although I think it is a matter of execution rather than concept), I am just wondering about why it is beneficial to limit the villain in general.
Because an unlimited villain feels unrealistic and kind of cartoonish.

More to the point, though, even if your villain is incredibly powerful, you must always remember how much more they have on their plate than the plucky little party of adventurers. I needed to constantly keep this in mind when I ran Dark Sun; even when the PCs were very powerful and thwarting a plot here and there, the Sorcerer-Kings had so many plots in motion and so much else to deal with, that they couldn't generally afford to allocate (for example) entire armies to thwart them. Keep in mind what else the big bad has on their plate - rebellions, rival kingdoms and/or big bads, tricky contracts with demon lords, family issues, the normal routines of rulership, managing the leadership of their armies, watching out for betrayals, etc.

CombatBunny
2016-01-20, 01:47 PM
Oh, I am well aware of the perils of trying to introduce a big bad immediately (although I think it is a matter of execution rather than concept), I am just wondering about why it is beneficial to limit the villain in general.

It's good not only to put limits to your BBEG, but to define him in general terms to help you guide his actions, behavior and how far would he go to get what he wants. Just a way not to end up with the typical: "He wants to take over the universe."

Some examples:

- His code of honor forbids him for killing children and animals.

- He would do anything to return his deceased wife to life. Other than that, he is not actually interested in conquering lands.

- Due to an accident when he was child, he has a phobia to cotton candy.

- He has a weak spot when it comes to people that tell interesting legends or tales. He would go as far as to forgive his worst enemy, if he tells him a worthy story.

JAL_1138
2016-01-20, 02:00 PM
Which is more satisfying: Captain America going in and personally beating the crap out of Red Skull, or Reed Richards holding up the Ultimate Nullifier (whatever that is...it, uh...nullifies things? I guess?) to stop Galactus, who can't be fought directly, because LOLNOPE YOU LOSE...?

The Glyphstone
2016-01-20, 02:03 PM
Which is more satisfying: Captain America going in and personally beating the crap out of Red Skull, or Reed Richards holding up the Ultimate Nullifier (whatever that is...it, uh...nullifies things? I guess?) to stop Galactus, who can't be fought directly, because LOLNOPE YOU LOSE...?

Depends on how much work and effort went into getting the Ultimate Nullifier, whatever that is. A quest to find and secure the BBEG's magic-bullet weakness is just as viable as a quest to punch him in the face, since it's still accomplished primarily by the efforts of the heroes.

BRC
2016-01-20, 02:05 PM
When to reduce the scope of the villain.

Well, first of all, not all villains need to be apocalyptic threats. There could be a personal vendetta against the Heroes, or the Heroes could be reduced scope. If the Heroes are noble revolutionaries, the Villain could be a petty tyrant, they don't need to be capable, or even motivated, to destroy the world.

Another option is to have the Villain scale up with the Heroes. Right now, he's just this one crazy guy with a small band of followers. If he escapes, he recruits more followers and becomes more powerful (Maybe give him some sort of emergency escape option to help him get away). This way the Heroes can fight the same villain throughout the campaign.

If you want the Heroes to be personally fighting the villain, rather than just dealing with his minions, you can't open with the villain at their full power.

It also helps avoid the whole "What are the authorities doing" question. If the problem can be solved by a handful of 4th level misfits, why hasn't some higher-level NPC, or somebody with an army, come through and flattened it. If the Villain is a major threat to the world, that should have happened.


Remember, the important thing about the Villain is how much the Players care about thwarting them. Making them a big, epic threat to the world is a good way to do that. The Players want to save the world. But, you can pull off the same level of dedication with a smaller-scale, more personal villain.

Apricot
2016-01-20, 02:59 PM
Two questions if I may:

What do you mean by save/load style in a tabletop? Do you mean letting players do "tap backs" if they make a mistake or what?

Could we talk more about limiting the scope of the big bad? In my experience for a good story you build up the villain as much as you can so that the hero's victory seems all the more satisfying and, well, heroic. Why do you think it is helpful to limit the villain's scope and what does that entail?

CRPGs allow save/loading, and so failure can be totally catastrophic and cause an instant end to the story without any questions. It's not a good feature, to be honest. It encourages bad habits and removes the sense of consequence. It breaks immersion. It's a necessary feature, however, and it's much better that CRPGs allow you to do it. It's not remotely appropriate for TRPGs, and "tap backs" are a sign that the adventure is being run improperly. The improper running is enforcing the kind of catastrophic failure that can instantly end the story without any questions. My emphasis was on that side of things, although I didn't say it as clearly as I could have. The rule of thumb is: if a die roll or a character choice could instantly end all possible adventuring that could happen, something's gone very wrong.

What makes victory satisfying isn't what one triumphs over, it's how one triumphs. This means beating the odds, using creative methods of winning, being big damn heroes, or whatever else satisfies the players in question. This tends to vary in its particulars, but nobody considers Pun-Pun defeating Pazuzu to be as wonderful and satisfying a story as an ant defeating a spider. So, insofar as designing a villain is concerned, the most important thing is that they be scaled to the heroes. A story of some street urchins outwitting and defeating a local crime lord can be as thrilling and brilliant as defeating the necromancer with world-domination aspirations. The villain should be appropriately proportioned so that the heroes can defeat them, and if they're scaled properly so that the villain is just barely in reach of the heroes, the struggle will necessarily be exciting and enjoyable. That's what is meant by limiting the scope. Of course, there's room in stories about things like cosmic horrors for the heroes to be completely outmatched, which shows that the key factor is that the recognized quest is at their level. Emphasis here being on "recognized:" a bait-and-switch is poor manners, especially when the difficulty is lowered. But that's a topic for another time.

NichG
2016-01-20, 03:36 PM
Oh, I am well aware of the perils of trying to introduce a big bad immediately (although I think it is a matter of execution rather than concept), I am just wondering about why it is beneficial to limit the villain in general.

I feel like the other responses have missed the original point about limiting the villain, which is to make it so that failure can happen without having it mean annihilation. If the villain is constrained, it means that whatever they are trying to accomplish will take time and effort regardless of the heroes. It may happen eventually if the heroes don't intervene, but it doesn't happen instantly if the heroes miss a step.

The result means something that is more of an organic give and take between two forces, which enables you to have more nuanced events in the game than just single-point-of-failure breakpoints. An unlimited villain is only defeated when you as the DM decide to allow them to be, and only through the ways you decide they are vulnerable. A limited villain's defeat can be conceptualized in the players' minds.

Quertus
2016-01-20, 03:51 PM
To the OP,

As has been stated, and evidenced recently by your comments about furniture-destroying friends, you game in bizarro land. As such, while most of the advice given in this thread would be beneficial for producing games the playgrounders would find enjoyable, it is questionable as to the relevance to the games you run.

That having been said, I have a few suspicions of things that may help you in your games, and in communicating about your games.

First, I want to disagree with most people in this thread on a simple point - I enjoyed the idea of an oversized army sieging the village with non-standard tactics. If the players understood how unusual this was, it should prompt them to investigate, and learn about the divine quest, the "humanitarian" ally, etc. Having "been around the block", I enjoy seeing something new, and enjoy games that almost beg to be investigated. This sounded like such a game.

Also, with the benefit of waiting to reply, I see that the army sieging this village 1) was not the only army / this was not the only village being sieged; 2) that the divine minion just happened to be in this little splinter army (for plot reasons, likely related to plot reasons of why the local lord was ignoring the army, likely related to plot reasons why the party is the chosen ones / the only ones who can/will solve this problem). So the king not sending forces to help this village... leaves me with different questions than most. What was the king's response to multiple villages being hit, by a foe who telegraphed his intention to starve humanity to death? How does the BBEG's ally, who wants to "minimize casualties", feel about the BBEG's goal of the entirety of humanity becoming casualties? What is the relationship to these entities of the one who convinced the local lord to remain uninvolved? And is this level of "Fate has chosen you, young ones" something that your group likes?

And why in the world did you decide to use house rules that say that horses pegasi cannot carry riders of less than child size? Is the party familiar with these house rules; if so, why did they want to ride the griffons?

However, your communication of these ideas has been... inefficient, at best. If your games run anything like this thread, it may be very difficult for your players to gain traction.


The problem is that giving too much information will make the players feel like they don't have a choice.

Hell, I remember the very very first game I ever ran for my dad when I was seven or so. It was a simple dungeon crawl, but he kept getting stuck (being a dad and not a gamer). Like he would come to a locked door and stand there staying at it and I would say something like "Why don't you try picking the lock," or he would come to vine covered wall and I would say "Why don't you climb the vines?" and other simple things. After about ten minutes he quit and said that he didn't enjoy the game because he was more or less just playing Simon says, following my suggestions rather than really participating.

We clearly have different definitions of what "giving too much information" means. Consider,

You see a door.
You see a locked door.
At the end of the stone hallway is a wooden door, 80 inches tall and 36 inches wide.
At the end of the stone hallway is a wooden door, 80 inches tall and 36 inches wide. Although the wood is scratched and slightly warped, the hinges and knob shine like new.
At the end of the stone hallway is a wooden door, 80 inches tall and 36 inches wide. Although the wood is scratched and slightly warped, the hinges and knob shine like new. Despite the scratches, you can make out a repeating snail / humming bird pattern around the edges.
At the end of the stone hallway is a wooden door, 80 inches tall and 36 inches wide. Although the wood is scratched and slightly warped, the hinges and knob shine like new. Despite the scratches, you can make out a repeating snail / humming bird pattern around the edges. The humming birds appear to be of a similar make to those carved into the mantle in the earlier room, and the repeating pattern makes you think of the repeating circles and triangles on the necklace of the woman in the painting above the mantle.


Which do you consider to be "too much information"?

I think the second and last descriptions are too much information bad. The last starts to take away the players' ability to draw conclusions for themselves, and, in the second, how do the characters know that the door is locked simply by looking at it? Any of the rest could be fine, depending on your group. Which level of detail does your group prefer? If the details of the doors' description are all but necessary to solve the puzzle of how to open the door the "right" way, will your players ask for those details if you simply tell them, "you see a door"?

Similar with your setup for the wild west beast:


Another thing to keep in mind is that if the situation is too "easy" or "simple", it creates holes in the narrative. Tossing aside meta-game concepts like challenge for a moment, you might still have to say "No" to preserve verisimilitude. For example, right now I am designing an encounter for a weird west style game where a thunder bird is eating local livestock and the players are asked to kill it. I need to make it difficult to kill and to reach so that the villagers actually need to hire the players to do it rather than just doing it themselves, and part of the strategy is by making it too large to be affected by most poison, only leave its lair at night, live in an area which is inaccessible to horses, and it living in a cave which cannot be blocked off, surrounded, sniped, or blown up with dynamite.
Now, these things might serve to say "No" to some of the players plans, but that isn't their purpose, their purpose is to make it so that the players need to do or to be something extraordinary to be called in the first place and be considered heroes when they succeed; if this wasn't the case the NPCs would have just taken care of the problem themselves.


You say that the idea started with a cave you saw in the Grand Canyon, so start with that. Describe the cave to the party, the way that they would see it. Let them come up with solutions. Have the sheriff ride along to point out, if necessary, that the village is directly below the cave (a detail which should be included in your initial description of the cave), and that the "local experts" fear that dynamiting the cave will result in a landslide, damaging the town. And if the PCs elect to use diplomacy to convince the sheriff to evacuate the town and dynamite the cave anyway, let that happen - although the sheriff may be up front about docking their pay by the amount of damage done to the town, or even saying that their hiring price was the amount the town estimated that they would save by not dynamiting the entrance themselves. Don't describe the cave as "sniper proof"; describe the overhang, etc, and, if the party proposes an untenable solution, explain why you see it as untenable, perhaps after asking them to explain how they would perform their solution.

You said that, if anything, your games have gotten worse with experience. Why do you think that is?

Your players' reactions to the problem seem to indicate that they are very grounded in "realistic", reasonable solutions - gathering an army (villagers, animated objects, griffons), talking to people (villagers, tinker, local lord, king), attacking vulnerable portions of the enemy's army (scouts, supplies), requesting help (from the king).


I already agreed that having a finite number of options for the players to choose from and being unwilling to accept anything else is a bad thing. I don't think anyone disagrees with that. It was never my intent to run a game that way, and in the future I will be extra vigilant to make sure I don't. So if that's all there is I guess we can drop this line of discussion.

I think you're half way there. The other half is to make sure that the type of ideas that your players tend to come up with will actually mean something in the type of game you run. Their answers were very reasonable, but utterly meaningless in the type of game you were running. So run something where the challenge is catered to their level/type of solution. Just like you wouldn't run an optimized tier 1 as the BBEG against a party of fighters ninjas who thought being able to take toughness for every feat was the best thing ever, don't run "investigate random local rumors on a time clock" for a grounded group that likes to try mundane solutions and wait.

Talakeal
2016-01-20, 05:21 PM
As has been stated, and evidenced recently by your comments about furniture-destroying friends, you game in bizarro land. As such, while most of the advice given in this thread would be beneficial for producing games the playgrounders would find enjoyable, it is questionable as to the relevance to the games you run.

As I said, it was a very bad patch that happened 15 years ago, not something I regularly put up with. I was merely using it as an example of the player drastically overreacting to an otherwise legitimate complaint.



Also, with the benefit of waiting to reply, I see that the army sieging this village 1) was not the only army / this was not the only village being sieged; 2) that the divine minion just happened to be in this little splinter army (for plot reasons, likely related to plot reasons of why the local lord was ignoring the army, likely related to plot reasons why the party is the chosen ones / the only ones who can/will solve this problem). So the king not sending forces to help this village... leaves me with different questions than most. What was the king's response to multiple villages being hit, by a foe who telegraphed his intention to starve humanity to death? How does the BBEG's ally, who wants to "minimize casualties", feel about the BBEG's goal of the entirety of humanity becoming casualties? What is the relationship to these entities of the one who convinced the local lord to remain uninvolved? And is this level of "Fate has chosen you, young ones" something that your group likes?

Ok, so I have been trying to be brief and summarize the plot both to keep the thread flowing and to avoid spoilers if my players see this, but since you have expressed interest I will give you a bit more information:

The campaign takes place in a continent size empire. Each of the twelve provinces is ruled by a Paladin (using the term in the manner it was initial meant, a peer of the king). Local lords each protect a city within the paladin's domain.
The PCs are in a relative backwater, there aren't very many cities. Their local town has a lord (the one who refused to help), and the "king" is actually just the lord of the only large city in the region, both are theoretically equal in rank, being under the authority of both the paladin and the empress, but because one's domain is so much larger and more important he has much more effective authority.

The lords don't know the villains goals, he only told the PCs because he was trying to recruit them (and in hindsight he probably regrets it). This is a large conspiracy of which he is only one element, other agents have been working to subtly hinder the Empire behind the scenes for the last few months,
kidnapping or bribing nobles and sabotaging lines of supply and communication, taking out roads and bridges and the like. The actual fighting had only just begun, so at this point the local lords don't know that it is anything but a one time problem.

So the BBEG's ally is a fallen archangel who was once a herald of the god of death, who simply had a crisis of conscience and couldn't bear to take any more lives. His ultimate goal is to capture an artifact held in the Imperial vault which has the power to reshape reality and to end the very concept of death forever. He has seen the coming conflict and has been using his powers to minimize casualties on both sides, his ultimate goal being to topple the Empire with as few casualties as possible and then end death before the actual culling of humanity can occur. No one on either side knows this, mind you, they merely see him as a powerful but eccentric being who performs miracles in exchange for relatively minor favors. For example, the reason the local lord is not fighting to defend his town is because this angel saved his daughter's life years ago in exchange for his surrender, ideally allowing the raiders to take the town without any casualties on either side.

The players are always going on about how they want to be extra special big damn heroes, so yes I would say so. Digging deeper into though, I am not sure what they actually want, because they have complained in the past about basically not being the best at what they do; one player complains if any NPC, friend or foe, can do his "thing" better than him, even if he is an overall more powerful character. This will probably take some dialogue and deep thought going forward.

Let me know if you have any more questions, I am happy to answer them.



And why in the world did you decide to use house rules that say that horses pegasi cannot carry riders of less than child size? Is the party familiar with these house rules; if so, why did they want to ride the griffons?

Pegasus aren't effected. I did not want to bog down this thread with endless descriptions of my house rules for the sake of brevity. Basically, you need to weigh at least four times as much as the thing which you are trying to carry to fly. So a 500 pound griffon cannot carry a grown man, but a 1200 pound Pegasus can. The players all knew about this, but the player who wanted to ride them was new to the game and had likely not absorbed all the rules yet.



We clearly have different definitions of what "giving too much information" means. Consider,

You see a door.
You see a locked door.
At the end of the stone hallway is a wooden door, 80 inches tall and 36 inches wide.
At the end of the stone hallway is a wooden door, 80 inches tall and 36 inches wide. Although the wood is scratched and slightly warped, the hinges and knob shine like new.
At the end of the stone hallway is a wooden door, 80 inches tall and 36 inches wide. Although the wood is scratched and slightly warped, the hinges and knob shine like new. Despite the scratches, you can make out a repeating snail / humming bird pattern around the edges.
At the end of the stone hallway is a wooden door, 80 inches tall and 36 inches wide. Although the wood is scratched and slightly warped, the hinges and knob shine like new. Despite the scratches, you can make out a repeating snail / humming bird pattern around the edges. The humming birds appear to be of a similar make to those carved into the mantle in the earlier room, and the repeating pattern makes you think of the repeating circles and triangles on the necklace of the woman in the painting above the mantle.


Which do you consider to be "too much information"?

I think the second and last descriptions are too much information bad. The last starts to take away the players' ability to draw conclusions for themselves, and, in the second, how do the characters know that the door is locked simply by looking at it? Any of the rest could be fine, depending on your group. Which level of detail does your group prefer? If the details of the doors' description are all but necessary to solve the puzzle of how to open the door the "right" way, will your players ask for those details if you simply tell them, "you see a door"?

The point of my post that you quoted was about how if you give the player too many "hints" they can feel railroaded rather than about the richness of description.


Now, as for how much description to give, that is a separate issue, but it is a good question which I have wrestled with. I have never quite gotten the hang of making the players realize what is a valuable clue and what is mere dungeon dressing. I started a thread about it a while back, but never really came to a satisfactory solution.



Similar with your setup for the wild west beast:

You say that the idea started with a cave you saw in the Grand Canyon, so start with that. Describe the cave to the party, the way that they would see it. Let them come up with solutions. Have the sheriff ride along to point out, if necessary, that the village is directly below the cave (a detail which should be included in your initial description of the cave), and that the "local experts" fear that dynamiting the cave will result in a landslide, damaging the town. And if the PCs elect to use diplomacy to convince the sheriff to evacuate the town and dynamite the cave anyway, let that happen - although the sheriff may be up front about docking their pay by the amount of damage done to the town, or even saying that their hiring price was the amount the town estimated that they would save by not dynamiting the entrance themselves. Don't describe the cave as "sniper proof"; describe the overhang, etc, and, if the party proposes an untenable solution, explain why you see it as untenable, perhaps after asking them to explain how they would perform their solution.

This was not a description for the party, it was just a brief anecdote on the forum to illustrate how terrain can set up challenges which people have been looking at way to closely and picking apart. When and if I actually run the adventure you can be assured I will do everything you suggest and more.


You said that, if anything, your games have gotten worse with experience. Why do you think that is?

Its hard to say, probably a lot of little things.

A couple of players kept having fits when they didn't get their way in game; and these fits were becoming both more frequent and more extreme. Not sure why, but it just got worse over time, fortunately they are no longer part of the group.

As for the indecisiveness it could be because I was a bit too harsh early on.
One time they hired a caravan to serve as bait, one time they drafted the population of an entire city and forced it to march hundreds of miles into a losing battle, one time they thought the best way to get a hostage taker too surrender was to murder his wife and show him her body as a threat, etc.
All of these plans backfired spectacularly with a lot of innocent people getting killed.
Rather than inspiring them to make better plans, or at least consider the consequences of their actions more seriously, but now they have gone too far in the opposite direction and now they sit around naval gazing forever without actually doing anything.

But overall I don't know, people change and as they grow older and get more responsibilities they have less time and energy to put into the game and are bringing a lot more baggage with them. And I think we have all, myself included, gotten a lot more stubborn and set in our ways as we get older.

LnGrrrR
2016-01-20, 06:10 PM
Talakeal, do your players actually want to play good guys? If they want to be heroes, great, but tell them heroes don't murder innocent women. :)

Also, re: your angel of death, why is he taking over this town? And why team up with a being who wouldn't seemingly care about what this archangel says? The whole "former herald of death that wants to stop death" sounds way more interesting to me than "random god appears and gets a bunch of monsters to attack a city but without trying to kill them too much" plot.

OldTrees1
2016-01-20, 06:24 PM
Now, as for how much description to give, that is a separate issue, but it is a good question which I have wrestled with. I have never quite gotten the hang of making the players realize what is a valuable clue and what is mere dungeon dressing. I started a thread about it a while back, but never really came to a satisfactory solution.

Based upon how much of your style we have understood so far, I would not worry about accuracy nor precision in signaling whether you saw a detail as important or merely as part of the world. Focus instead on accurate and precise description (small griffons being an example we know you know). Instead, for fine tuning players' ability to find clues, tune how much information they need to sift through (although the case in the OP seemed like too little information as we know you know).

Talakeal
2016-01-20, 08:37 PM
Talakeal, do your players actually want to play good guys? If they want to be heroes, great, but tell them heroes don't murder innocent women. :)

Also, re: your angel of death, why is he taking over this town? And why team up with a being who wouldn't seemingly care about what this archangel says? The whole "former herald of death that wants to stop death" sounds way more interesting to me than "random god appears and gets a bunch of monsters to attack a city but without trying to kill them too much" plot.

It wasn't an innocent woman, his wife was also a bandit.


The angel can't get access to the Imperial vault where the artifact is held while the Empire is still guarding it, so he is trying to find a way to arrange the fall of the Empire while at the same time minimizing the casualties of what is bound to be an incredibly bloody coup.

Basically, the whole plot is about a group of second string cosmic beings who want to shake up the nature of the world for their own personal reasons and have thus worked together to form a large conspiracy. I actually agree that the big beastly beat 'em up guy is the last interesting, but he is also the most obvious and easiest to write adventures involving. But we will see how it plays out from here.

Kardwill
2016-01-22, 05:11 AM
Could we talk more about limiting the scope of the big bad? In my experience for a good story you build up the villain as much as you can so that the hero's victory seems all the more satisfying and, well, heroic. Why do you think it is helpful to limit the villain's scope and what does that entail?

For the purpose of designing an adventure, the "big bad" is not the big threat that the players will have to tackle at the end of the campaign, it's the opposition they will face in this adventure.

So the overall threat that starts the whole campaign might be a dark god sending armies to raze human villages, and an army may walk toward the village at this very moment, but those are not really what the players will fight. The "big bad" of the current adventure will be the orc patrol they will have to evade to get a message to the king, or the raiders that will prey on the villagers when they evacuate, or the corrupt councillor that is telling the king not to get involved...
You don't have to balance your cosmic threat, so long as the players can deal in a satisfying fashion with the stuff on their plate right now.

Another advantage will be that even if they fail, it will possibly have more interesting results than a TPK

Amphetryon
2016-01-22, 11:19 AM
It wasn't an innocent woman, his wife was also a bandit.


The angel can't get access to the Imperial vault where the artifact is held while the Empire is still guarding it, so he is trying to find a way to arrange the fall of the Empire while at the same time minimizing the casualties of what is bound to be an incredibly bloody coup.

Basically, the whole plot is about a group of second string cosmic beings who want to shake up the nature of the world for their own personal reasons and have thus worked together to form a large conspiracy. I actually agree that the big beastly beat 'em up guy is the last interesting, but he is also the most obvious and easiest to write adventures involving. But we will see how it plays out from here.
From my experience, Players are more engaged and likely to have a good time when 'the whole plot' is about the PCs and their actions, rather than about the antagonists. The way the above is written - and much of your apparent resistance to limiting the scope of the Big Bad the PCs have to deal with at their current level - has the PCs as incidental to 'the whole plot.' Most of the Players I've known would be frustrated if they felt their Characters were incidental.

Talakeal
2016-01-22, 01:05 PM
From my experience, Players are more engaged and likely to have a good time when 'the whole plot' is about the PCs and their actions, rather than about the antagonists. The way the above is written - and much of your apparent resistance to limiting the scope of the Big Bad the PCs have to deal with at their current level - has the PCs as incidental to 'the whole plot.' Most of the Players I've known would be frustrated if they felt their Characters were incidental.

Would you have felt better if I had put "The whole plot is about the PCs uncovrring and foiling..." first?

Obviously the PCs are the most important people in the game, if not the whole world. But as a DM its not really my perogative to determine their nature or goals, and at this point I dont know what they are going to do. Actually plotting out the PCs epic destinies for them leads to the twin terrors of railroading and DM favoritism. I find it is far better to plan out what the opposition is doing and leave the PCs actions to themselves rather than dictate it out too far in advance.

Segev
2016-01-22, 11:46 PM
Would you have felt better if I had put "The whole plot is about the PCs uncovrring and foiling..." first?

Obviously the PCs are the most important people in the game, if not the whole world. But as a DM its not really my perogative to determine their nature or goals, and at this point I dont know what they are going to do. Actually plotting out the PCs epic destinies for them leads to the twin terrors of railroading and DM favoritism. I find it is far better to plan out what the opposition is doing and leave the PCs actions to themselves rather than dictate it out too far in advance.

We are defaulting to being a bit critical of the focus, I admit.

That said, this is an easy trap to fall into as a DM. Making the plot all about the bad guys. With the cosmic second-stringers, finding a way to focus it not just on the PCs uncovering and thwarting, but to make it about how the cosmic second-stringers' activities are effecting the PCs' lives such that the PCs' own motives lead into thwarting them is a more engaging - albeit harder to pull off and not quite as typically D&D - approach.

And yeah, what you said COULD mean that. I think a lot of the harping on the focus of it is to help you make sure you stay focused on that. It's very easy, even when you think you're making a plot for your PCs, to make it about the events the bad guys are doing, and incorporate the PCs as cogs rather than as main drivers. (It's something I oft struggle with when I GM.)

Amphetryon
2016-01-23, 09:47 AM
We are defaulting to being a bit critical of the focus, I admit.

That said, this is an easy trap to fall into as a DM. Making the plot all about the bad guys. With the cosmic second-stringers, finding a way to focus it not just on the PCs uncovering and thwarting, but to make it about how the cosmic second-stringers' activities are effecting the PCs' lives such that the PCs' own motives lead into thwarting them is a more engaging - albeit harder to pull off and not quite as typically D&D - approach.

And yeah, what you said COULD mean that. I think a lot of the harping on the focus of it is to help you make sure you stay focused on that. It's very easy, even when you think you're making a plot for your PCs, to make it about the events the bad guys are doing, and incorporate the PCs as cogs rather than as main drivers. (It's something I oft struggle with when I GM.)

This. Red Fel (among others) is fond of saying that antagonists are proactive and protagonists are reactive, and Red Fel has a point. At the same time, a good TTRPG game generally has the plot at least somewhat reactive to the PCs, who are proactive in their attempts at a solution. That can be a very tricky balancing act. Following Red Fel's model makes a lot of narrative sense, so it's often the GM's job to balance proactive antagonists with making the overall plot reactive to how the PCs respond to the Big Bad that's in front of them, in order to keep the Players from feeling led around by the nose.

Segev
2016-01-23, 09:54 AM
That's usually best accomplished by having the plot not be "all about" the villain's proaction, but about the effects of the villain's actions on the PCs' personal/group lives.

Now, Talekeal did that in this plot: it was about the villain's active army of stompiness's decision to raze the town in which the PCs live(d). So that is something he got more or less right, I think.

neonchameleon
2016-01-23, 10:49 AM
And yeah, I have said over and over again that more communication is great. The problem is that giving too much information will make the players feel like they don't have a choice.

Hell, I remember the very very first game I ever ran for my dad when I was seven or so. It was a simple dungeon crawl, but he kept getting stuck (being a dad and not a gamer). Like he would come to a locked door and stand there staying at it and I would say something like "Why don't you try picking the lock," or he would come to vine covered wall and I would say "Why don't you climb the vines?" and other simple things. After about ten minutes he quit and said that he didn't enjoy the game because he was more or less just playing Simon says, following my suggestions rather than really participating.

The problem appears to be that you learned the wrong lesson from this but are still making the fundamental mistake your dad pointed out. That you still want the PCs to pick the lock/climb the vines because that is the way you think things should go. You appear to still be playing Simon Says - but Simon is no longer saying what to do, merely marking people down when they don't do it. Your player who wants less railroading wants rid of the secret scoresheet while the one who wants more wants it in the open. But either way Secret Simon Says is worse than Simon Says.

Kalmageddon
2016-01-23, 11:20 AM
The problem appears to be that you learned the wrong lesson from this but are still making the fundamental mistake your dad pointed out. That you still want the PCs to pick the lock/climb the vines because that is the way you think things should go. You appear to still be playing Simon Says - but Simon is no longer saying what to do, merely marking people down when they don't do it. Your player who wants less railroading wants rid of the secret scoresheet while the one who wants more wants it in the open. But either way Secret Simon Says is worse than Simon Says.

I would like to state that I really, really hate when people talk down on someone this way.
Talakeal is not doing anything of the sort. Can we please stop bashing playstyles we don't like?

Thrudd
2016-01-23, 11:42 AM
Would you have felt better if I had put "The whole plot is about the PCs uncovrring and foiling..." first?

Obviously the PCs are the most important people in the game, if not the whole world. But as a DM its not really my perogative to determine their nature or goals, and at this point I dont know what they are going to do. Actually plotting out the PCs epic destinies for them leads to the twin terrors of railroading and DM favoritism. I find it is far better to plan out what the opposition is doing and leave the PCs actions to themselves rather than dictate it out too far in advance.

Don't plot out their epic destinies. There is no way to know if any given character will have an epic destiny. But the game should be about them, doing what they want to do, and the game world reacting and interacting with them. That is how the whole "plot" is about them. IE If the player characters decide to abandon the village, then the village gets destroyed and the story is no longer about saving a village. The village will still be destroyed, but if they aren't there to see it it doesn't get described. The story is about a group of adventurers and the adventures they participate in.

The trick is getting them to be immersed enough in your world and their characters that they have a clear idea of what they want.

You can definately have an over-arching plot that progresses with time in the fictional world, and NPCs that have their own goals and work towards them regardless of whether the characters do anything. You just can't get upset if the players don't immediately decide to involve themselves with those characters or events right away or in the manner you predicted or at all.

An alternative, to ensure the adventures the players engage with are all relevant, is to do an episodic. "The party has gone to investigate rumors of a haunted castle. There were rumors that "x" and "y", and an old sage in the city told you "z" before you set out. You are camped in a ruined cottage with the castle in sight."

Get the players to understand and agree to this format, and it could make life much easier for you. Just make sure the adventures you send them on make sense for their characters at any given time.

LnGrrrR
2016-01-23, 01:38 PM
I would like to state that I really, really hate when people talk down on someone this way.
Talakeal is not doing anything of the sort. Can we please stop bashing playstyles we don't like?

He somewhat is/was? The only answer for defending the town was "find help". Which may be valid in this case, but that's just as valid as having the only way to open a locked door be to pick it, or the only way to get up is by climbing the vines. The thing that makes TTRPGs better than CRPGs is that you aren't stuck to just one or two paths.

As Talake said up thread, he wants there to be multiple ways to solve problems, which is good (for the most part). But maybe that isn't coming across to his players.

GrayGriffin
2016-01-23, 01:56 PM
I would like to state that I really, really hate when people talk down on someone this way.
Talakeal is not doing anything of the sort. Can we please stop bashing playstyles we don't like?
Um, what? neonchameleon is merely extending the same metaphor Talakeal used. That's not talking down at all.

Talakeal
2016-01-23, 01:57 PM
Don't plot out their epic destinies. There is no way to know if any given character will have an epic destiny. But the game should be about them, doing what they want to do, and the game world reacting and interacting with them. That is how the whole "plot" is about them. IE If the player characters decide to abandon the village, then the village gets destroyed and the story is no longer about saving a village. The village will still be destroyed, but if they aren't there to see it it doesn't get described. The story is about a group of adventurers and the adventures they participate in.

The trick is getting them to be immersed enough in your world and their characters that they have a clear idea of what they want.

You can definately have an over-arching plot that progresses with time in the fictional world, and NPCs that have their own goals and work towards them regardless of whether the characters do anything. You just can't get upset if the players don't immediately decide to involve themselves with those characters or events right away or in the manner you predicted or at all.

An alternative, to ensure the adventures the players engage with are all relevant, is to do an episodic. "The party has gone to investigate rumors of a haunted castle. There were rumors that "x" and "y", and an old sage in the city told you "z" before you set out. You are camped in a ruined cottage with the castle in sight."

Get the players to understand and agree to this format, and it could make life much easier for you. Just make sure the adventures you send them on make sense for their characters at any given time.

You must have much more proactive players than I do. Mine rarely take actions if prompted, and if asked what their long term goals are they tell me things nebulous and far reaching things like "Become the most powerful sorcerer in the world," or "Cleanse the world of evil,"

Even my PC for the Mage game I am currently playing in, which I think is incredibly well fleshed out, doesn't have a lot of long term goals that make for adventure, especially with another party.
My PC's goal are:

To finish school a get a medical license.
To protect my girlfriend and help her establish her music career.
To discover a cure for aging
To uncover my secret family history

Which is something for the DM to work on, but hardly enough to plot a campaign around (at least a long term one), and for the most part I am content to go wherever the world takes me healing people and uncovering mysteries, all of which works out fine with the DM's overarching plot.

Now, I suppose if you had a full group with the level of detail you could weave all their stories together to make a plot about the PCs goals, but that is a lot of work which might not only burn out the DM but also has a high likelihood of the players abandoning it and forcing the DM to start over.


I would like to state that I really, really hate when people talk down on someone this way.
Talakeal is not doing anything of the sort. Can we please stop bashing playstyles we don't like?

Thanks again for defending me call, I really appreciate it. But in this case I think Neon actually does have a point, albeit one expressed in an overly harsh and far reaching manner.

I do have a habit of making problems with only a finite number of obvious solutions. Maintaining a balance between freedom and structure, challenge vs. punishment, and being open vs. being patronizing is a complicated dance that I still struggle with.


This. Red Fel (among others) is fond of saying that antagonists are proactive and protagonists are reactive, and Red Fel has a point. At the same time, a good TTRPG game generally has the plot at least somewhat reactive to the PCs, who are proactive in their attempts at a solution. That can be a very tricky balancing act. Following Red Fel's model makes a lot of narrative sense, so it's often the GM's job to balance proactive antagonists with making the overall plot reactive to how the PCs respond to the Big Bad that's in front of them, in order to keep the Players from feeling led around by the nose.

You know, I tried running a game once where the PCs were proactive. Never again.

We spent so dang much time sitting around waiting for the PCs to come up with a plan or bickering over what direction to proceed with.

And then when I actually introduced antagonists into the game who wanted to stop the PCs plans the screaming and rage and hurt feelings about me trying to "screw over" or "shut down" all of the players ideas was so intense it instantly killed the game (and perhaps all future gaming with that group) in a storm that makes this current discussion seem like the best gaming ever.

Vitruviansquid
2016-01-23, 02:05 PM
There is a middle ground between "here are some vines, climb the vines" and "gigantic army is attacking... figure it out."

Thrudd
2016-01-23, 03:10 PM
You must have much more proactive players than I do. Mine rarely take actions if prompted, and if asked what their long term goals are they tell me things nebulous and far reaching things like "Become the most powerful sorcerer in the world," or "Cleanse the world of evil,"

Even my PC for the Mage game I am currently playing in, which I think is incredibly well fleshed out, doesn't have a lot of long term goals that make for adventure, especially with another party.
My PC's goal are:

To finish school a get a medical license.
To protect my girlfriend and help her establish her music career.
To discover a cure for aging
To uncover my secret family history

Which is something for the DM to work on, but hardly enough to plot a campaign around (at least a long term one), and for the most part I am content to go wherever the world takes me healing people and uncovering mysteries, all of which works out fine with the DM's overarching plot.

Now, I suppose if you had a full group with the level of detail you could weave all their stories together to make a plot about the PCs goals, but that is a lot of work which might not only burn out the DM but also has a high likelihood of the players abandoning it and forcing the DM to start over.



You know, I tried running a game once where the PCs were proactive. Never again.

We spent so dang much time sitting around waiting for the PCs to come up with a plan or bickering over what direction to proceed with.

And then when I actually introduced antagonists into the game who wanted to stop the PCs plans the screaming and rage and hurt feelings about me trying to "screw over" or "shut down" all of the players ideas was so intense it instantly killed the game (and perhaps all future gaming with that group) in a storm that makes this current discussion seem like the best gaming ever.

A few things:"become the greatest sorceror ever" and "fight evil wherever it appears" are great motives that you can easily build into adventures that the players will want to pursue. That is the type and level of goal I want. You can predict what those characters will want, and where they will go. Want to gain magic power? There are rumors of magic items and secrets and spells at X and Y and Z. Want to fight evil? There are rumors of an evil monster terrorizing X, undead sighted at Y, a village destroyed by a dragon at Z. They are bound to go for some or all of those. Combine them both: rumors of an evil monster residing in the remains of a wizard's tower. Everyone wins. The important thing is to establish that the world is full of opportunities for these goals to be pursued, and to make sure the players pick goals in the first place that make sense for your setting.

The Mage game motives is a good example, to me, of a lack of planning at the pre-game level. Your character might need a heavy hand to get together and stay together with a group not focused on those specific goals. This is avoided by having players collaborate during character creation to build a group that has at least related goals and an overall relationship. It is a necessity in a game that is about the same group of characters doing things together every session. You can have your personal specific goals which may or may not be a part of the group adventure, but you also need to agree with the group on the group motive: like being investigators into supernatural occurences or being magical archaeologists investigating secrets, or whatever. The GM has a lot to say about what is appropriate in this case, and may even dictate it to the group at the beginning. Regardless, it should be decided before the game starts so you don't have players saying: "my character wouldn't do that, he only cares about saving his sick sister!".

It should not totally be the GM's responsibility to force a group of completely unrelated and possibly incompatible characters together into a contrived story. The players should be given the majority of the responsibility to design characters intended to work together and stay together.

If players can't think of anything to do, the GM is likely not communicating to them their options, or has failed to provide them with options that make sense for the characters.

If players are really paralyzed by choices, like they can't decide whether to fight the dragon, the undead, or hunt monsters, then perhaps the episodic is the best choice. Given their stated goals, set them at the start of an adventure which promises something they want, and use some short exposition to give them the relevant information that led them there. Ie: "You've tracked the dragon to this cave complex. It is rumored that x, y, and z, and you know that also living in this area are some goblins and gnomes. What sort of equipment would you have taken with you?"

Amphetryon
2016-01-23, 03:42 PM
You know, I tried running a game once where the PCs were proactive. Never again.

We spent so dang much time sitting around waiting for the PCs to come up with a plan or bickering over what direction to proceed with.

And then when I actually introduced antagonists into the game who wanted to stop the PCs plans the screaming and rage and hurt feelings about me trying to "screw over" or "shut down" all of the players ideas was so intense it instantly killed the game (and perhaps all future gaming with that group) in a storm that makes this current discussion seem like the best gaming ever.
So, if you don't want the Players to be proactive, and you don't want the Players to react in ways you've not previously considered likely to succeed (evidenced by the things they suggested in the session that you told them would not work), then as far as I can tell that leaves the Players with a game of 'Guess What the GM is Thinking.' From what I've understood of your posts, that's not a style you favor as a Player.

So, what is it you want from your Players? 'Proactive' is ruled out, above. 'Creatively reactive' is discouraged, as many in this thread (myself included) read the data.

Talakeal
2016-01-23, 04:39 PM
So, if you don't want the Players to be proactive, and you don't want the Players to react in ways you've not previously considered likely to succeed (evidenced by the things they suggested in the session that you told them would not work), then as far as I can tell that leaves the Players with a game of 'Guess What the GM is Thinking.' From what I've understood of your posts, that's not a style you favor as a Player.

So, what is it you want from your Players? 'Proactive' is ruled out, above. 'Creatively reactive' is discouraged, as many in this thread (myself included) read the data.
"Not previously considered likely to succeed," is a really weird way of saying "Anything you I thought of AND approved," which is not at all what I am saying, merely something you have "read from the data", but is almost the complete opposite of what I was trying to say.

There is a world of difference between shutting down anything you haven't thought of and shutting down things that are intentionally put in as challenges either by the scenario design or by the rules.

For example, if I am running a straight forward dungeon crawl simply randomly generating monsters straight out of the monster manual and the players come up against a fire elemental. A fire elemental is immune to fire damage and non-magic weapons. It isn't the DM's fault if the players can only think to use fire spells and non magical weapons against it, it is simply the rules of the game.


Again, you are actively trying to cast me in the worst light possible, so of course it is going to end up looking like a no win situation. But even if we are taking it as fact that all your assumptions are true (which they aren't) I could still run a plethora of fun games where I have a linear adventure if I properly telegraph it to the players without needing to break the fourth wall.



On a related note, I am going to actually go through my notes for the adventures I ran for my previous group and tally up how the games ended:

Number of adventures where the players did nothing seriously unexpected and won: 66
Number of adventures where the players did nothing seriously unexpected and lost or suffered a major setback: 7
Number of adventures that the players did something wildly unexpected and won: 18
Number of adventures that the players did something wildly unexpected and lost or suffered a major setback: 11*

*In all but a couple of these cases the players still won. Most of the setbacks involved them deciding to use bystanders as bait or to call a villain's bluff and as a result they got a lot of innocent people hurt or killed.

Ruslan
2016-01-23, 05:23 PM
Player A said they didn't like ...
...
Player B wanted me to...
...
Player C, on the other hand, said...Too much feedback. Stop being a doormat and trying to cater for every little complaint that pops into their head. From what I get, looks like you're practically begging for them to complain. If you do that, they WILL complain. So don't do that. Run a solid adventure, try to enjoy it, try to have them enjoy it. Expand on the positives, don't dwell on the negatives.

Amphetryon
2016-01-23, 06:08 PM
Again, you are actively trying to cast me in the worst light possible, so of course it is going to end up looking like a no win situation. But even if we are taking it as fact that all your assumptions are true (which they aren't) I could still run a plethora of fun games where I have a linear adventure if I properly telegraph it to the players without needing to break the fourth wall.What I am actively trying to do is read the thread, and respond as constructively as possible to the question posed in the title: to wit,"Where did I go wrong?" I sincerely apologize if answering that question caused a problem.

DarkSoul
2016-01-23, 10:59 PM
Well, I've read most of this thread, and have formed some impressions based on what I read. This could feel a little stream-of-consciousness at times, and for that I apologize. If someone has said something similar in the parts of the thread that I didn't get to, as I say here, then just consider it as a "yeah, what they said".

My first impression is that you have a story plotted out in your head for any given adventure and/or portion of your campaign. This is a good thing, planning ahead means that you're invested in the storyline and your players don't show up every week to a "well, let's see what's over here today". However, in my opinion you either overthink the details of your story, or you're unwilling to entertain details that you didn't think of. I saw several times that you presented the party with the scenario and had a finite list of actions they could take to succeed. When the players tried something you didn't think would succeed, you told them point blank (and possibly out of character) that their idea had no chance of working.

Knock that off. You are the DM, which means you are the narrator of a shared story. You provide the antagonist and his plot, and the players provide the protagonists. Note the emphasis on shared. If you tell a story that has a specified resolution and the other people telling that story with you have no way to influence the outcome, then you shouldn't be sharing your story. Write it down and publish it as a book. However, you're sharing your story and allowing other people to influence the telling of it by creating their own protagonists.

Rather than have someone tell them "you can't do that", your players should be allowed to try anything, and you need to make an effort to disallow yourself from saying no. When it comes to any actions or events that aren't completely absurd (like the nuclear reactor comment), the closest you should get to saying no is "You can try." In fact, that should probably become your default answer to every course of action the players want to attempt, just so they can't get a read on you. "Oh, he only says we can 'try' when there's no chance it'll work." is what you're trying to avoid. Even if it means letting them try to make that DC 50 diplomacy check as a level 1 character, let them try. You don't have to tell them what will and won't work, let them find out in-game. And never tell them outside the game that "You never had a chance!"

You might even end up with more proactive players, if they're not being told "guess one of the ways I've decided you can win, or you're dead", and are instead told "give it a shot and see what happens".

Also, relax the chokehold you have on your plot. I think you're following the classic plan for a campaign where you start small, with a single village, and reveal the world from there. "This is where you start, this is what's going on, this is the bad guy." Try stepping back from that and start thinking about the campaign from the top down:

"This is the villain. He is the patron god of the savage races, and he and several other beings have entered into an alliance to shatter the humans' superiority over the other races. His personal operatives are working on plots A, B, and C, while his allies are working toward D, E, and F. Plot A is in this area, B is over here, etc. If his plan proceeds unopposed, the end result will be this."

At this point, you can step back and ask the players what kind of campaign they want. If they want political intrigue, plot E is taking place in a major city where the villain's agents are destabilizing the government to prevent an organized resistance to the massed horde of savages once they finish up plot D. If they want a gritty survival tale where they become folk heroes despite the odds against them, start them with plot A. If they want exploration and discovery, plot C's bad guys are plundering human tombs for the funereal wealth and magic of the former heroes and rulers of the land.

You don't have to wait for your players to do something, either. You're telling one of many stories in your world, and they all have their own timeline. If the players decide to start with plot A to become folk heroes and suddenly move into plot C because they don't want to stick around, that's fine; they'll have to live with the consequences of their decision when the story moves on without them and the village is a smoking ruin when or if they come back to it.

Your story doesn't have to be "Plot A happens, then plot B, then plot C..." Set up your world, put plans into motion, and then let the players come in and mess the whole thing up as only PCs can.

Finally, talk to your players. Find out what they like and don't like in an adventure or campaign, and cater to it. If it's not the type of game you want to run exclusively, try to compromise with them. It's a shared experience after all. If you can find a copy of Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering, it's worth a read, especially the part about player types and emotional kicks. The DMG 2 touches on similar topics as well, so look there too. Considering Robin D. Laws gets author credit on the cover, it should help you out.

Kalmageddon
2016-01-24, 08:40 AM
...I saw several times that you presented the party with the scenario and had a finite list of actions they could take to succeed. When the players tried something you didn't think would succeed, you told them point blank (and possibly out of character) that their idea had no chance of working...

...Rather than have someone tell them "you can't do that", your players should be allowed to try anything, and you need to make an effort to disallow yourself from saying no. When it comes to any actions or events that aren't completely absurd (like the nuclear reactor comment), the closest you should get to saying no is "You can try." In fact, that should probably become your default answer to every course of action the players want to attempt, just so they can't get a read on you. "Oh, he only says we can 'try' when there's no chance it'll work." is what you're trying to avoid. Even if it means letting them try to make that DC 50 diplomacy check as a level 1 character, let them try. You don't have to tell them what will and won't work, let them find out in-game. And never tell them outside the game that "You never had a chance!"...

And I'm going to vehemently disagree once again with this attitude.
This attitdue might work in a narrativistic system where the mechanics are pretty loose and allow for the GM to bend the narrative to make anything viable. And even then, it works only if the GM feels like that's a good way of running the session, which is not always the case.
I'm going to stop speaking as a GM and I'm going to speak as a player for once:

As a player I would absolutely loathe what you are suggesting.
If I come up with a plan that has obvious flaws that would give it like a 1% chance of succeeding and the GM only told me "you can try", after my inevitable faliure I would feel like I wasted my time on something that was basically impossibile.
If I come up with a flawed plan I expect the following to happen:
- First of all the GM will recap my plan to me, so that if I worded it incorrectly I have a chance to say "hang on, allow me to explain my plan better, because the way I explained it the first time had a few flaws that would have prevented it from making sense".
- Second, if there are good IC reasons as to why my character should know better, I expect to be told to make a check to determine the flaws in my plan, if the system allows it at all. In D&D this should be an Intelligence/Wisdom check or an appropriate Skill check.
- Third, if after all these things I still want to go on with that plan and I'm serious about it, not trolling, I expect the GM to OOC adress me and explain both in IC terms and OOC terms why my plan has excessively slim chances of succeeding.
Wasting effort on something that has next to 0 chances of succeeding is not fun. It's a waste of time, of energies, of a gaming night. And it WILL leave everyone bitter about it, telling the GM "why didn't you stop us from doing it?".

Now this doesn't mean that the GM has to shoot down every plan he hasn't thought about in the first place. But it does mean that the GM is the architect of the world where the campaign takes place. Everything that happens in it, happens because the GM determined that it makes sense for whatever reason.
The GM always knows if a plan makes sense, if a plan is going to succeed and if he doesn't know for sure he damn well knows how slim are the chances of success. In light of that, the GM also has the responsability of letting his players know, one way or another, how reasonable their initiatives are.

And finally, on "faliure should still be interesting and move the narrative foward". That is, on the surface, a good idea. After all, we all like an interesting game, don't we? While at the same time, we always hate when a session stalls because the dice didn't roll our way.
But in practice, it's something that requires both very specific conditions, a system made for that and a ton of effort from the GM. To expect that faliure is always interesting and relevant is utopistic. The GM has to effectively plan 2 sessions at the same time. One where the players succeed and another where the players fail, but both things somehow make everything move foward, fun and dynamic. Or, Hell, let's go for the "alternate universe" approach, where every faliure has to have interesting, world altering consequences! Yeah, let's make the GM plan for exponentially numerous events for each time the players fail.
Now tell me this doesn't sound at least a little unfair towards the GM.
Let me make an example.
In the OP story, the players wanted to use griffins to fend the enemy army. The GM rightfully pointed out that they had 0 experience with such kind of animals and no skills useful in handling them.
Now let's say the players did that anyway. They take the griffins, try to use them to defend the town and fail.
Now make this interesting for me.
Becuase I sure can't.
- The griffins fly away.
- The griffins don't do anything at all.
- The griffins turn agains the players.
- The griffins turn against the villagers.
- The griffins **** all over the place, the players are now covered in bird/lion turds and still have an army to face.
Oh god, so fun, so narrative driven! We should totally allow the players to **** everything up by trying to handle dangerous beasts their characters know they have no experience with!
And I'm sure some smarty pants will come up with some amazing quest emerging from a failed check to handle a griffin. But my point is, you came up with it on an Internet forum. You had minutes, hours to think about it.
A GM has to make split-second decisions because the players don't want to wait around.
And making faliure interesting beyond the purely cosmetic (making faliure flashy and or dramatic is a given for most people, sure, nothing wrong with that) is something very few people can do. And it's not fair to ask the GM to always do that, especially NOT when the system they are playing with doesn't give them the right tools for this kind of job.

The GM is just another player and I really, really don't like it when people expect the GM to put 500% more effort into everything he does while the Players can't even be bothered to come up with something clever and reasonable to save their characters and succeed in their objectives. No, they have to be constantly pandered and reassured that yes, they are the protagonist and no, nothing uninteresting or stupid will ever come out of their amazing lack of foresight or understanding.
It's a bull**** double standard and I'm sick to the bone with it.

Amphetryon
2016-01-24, 09:06 AM
Now make this interesting for me.
Becuase I sure can't.
- The griffins fly away.
- The griffins don't do anything at all.
- The griffins turn agains the players.
- The griffins turn against the villagers.
- The griffins **** all over the place, the players are now covered in bird/lion turds and still have an army to face.The griffons ineffectually harass the enemy troops without doing them actual damage, resulting in some small percentage (say, 10%) of enemy attacks being directed at the annoying griffons until they are no longer a nuisance or the enemy is otherwise dealt with.

If that's not interesting, our tastes vary. It took me less time to come up with than it did to finish your post, or to type this response. That's not intended as a brag.

GloatingSwine
2016-01-24, 09:19 AM
Wasting effort on something that has next to 0 chances of succeeding is not fun. It's a waste of time, of energies, of a gaming night. And it WILL leave everyone bitter about it, telling the GM "why didn't you stop us from doing it?".

I think the answer isn't "GM sould stop us doing this", it's "GM should tailor the options the campaign presents so that they aren't hugely unlikely solutions".

That doesn't stop the players from making up their own hugely unlikely solutions, but hugely unlikely solutions shouldn't proceed out of things the GM left in the world and then wouldn't let the players play with.

It stands out in this example because all of the ordinary solutions were hugely unlikely because the PCs were supposed to use an extraordinary solution (but not told about the extraordinary solution and the quest wasn't about overcoming the obstacles required to reach it, even when they did go and use the lich they were going back to a dungeon they'd cleared out so there was no adventure to get to the solution)


In this example it was only worth mentioning the existence of the griffons if there was a reasonable way for the players to do something with them. There wasn't, because the campaign required an extraordinary solution and even "persuade their handler to help" wasn't going to make them into a solution (and wouldn't be a satisfying solution anyway because they didn't have to adventure to get to him).

Kalmageddon
2016-01-24, 10:08 AM
I think the answer isn't "GM sould stop us doing this", it's "GM should tailor the options the campaign presents so that they aren't hugely unlikely solutions".

That doesn't stop the players from making up their own hugely unlikely solutions, but hugely unlikely solutions shouldn't proceed out of things the GM left in the world and then wouldn't let the players play with.

It stands out in this example because all of the ordinary solutions were hugely unlikely because the PCs were supposed to use an extraordinary solution (but not told about the extraordinary solution and the quest wasn't about overcoming the obstacles required to reach it, even when they did go and use the lich they were going back to a dungeon they'd cleared out so there was no adventure to get to the solution)


In this example it was only worth mentioning the existence of the griffons if there was a reasonable way for the players to do something with them. There wasn't, because the campaign required an extraordinary solution and even "persuade their handler to help" wasn't going to make them into a solution (and wouldn't be a satisfying solution anyway because they didn't have to adventure to get to him).

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this.
Basically, the GM should put stuff into the world only if it is relevant to the plot?
The griffins were there as window dressing as far as I can tell. Or maybe they could become relevant later. If you don't want to run a game completely on the rails, you have to put stuff into the world that doesn't immediately matter, because it might matter someday and you don't want it to pop out of nowhere, you want to establish things as soon as the PCs meet them.
I'm fairly sure that Talakeal didn't describe the Lord hand his griffins in response to a query about possibile solutions, it was probably there because it was an established part of the setting.

Beside, it's good for challenge to have more elements to interact with than those that might be useful. That way, you get to use your brain and discriminate between things that are relevant and things that are not.

And the bolded part just isn't clear to me.

OldTrees1
2016-01-24, 10:24 AM
So, if you don't want the Players to be proactive, and you don't want the Players to react in ways you've not previously considered likely to succeed (evidenced by the things they suggested in the session that you told them would not work), then as far as I can tell that leaves the Players with a game of 'Guess What the GM is Thinking.' From what I've understood of your posts, that's not a style you favor as a Player.

So, what is it you want from your Players? 'Proactive' is ruled out, above. 'Creatively reactive' is discouraged, as many in this thread (myself included) read the data.

I have a different reading of the data. It appeared to me that Talakeal wants creative reactive but had some bad habits (insufficient information for the players, some misinformation via assumptions, too little detail for unexpected solutions) that he came to this thread for help on.

So far we have addressed and he has mostly agreed on the "less misinformation" and the "less kneejerk denials". Perhaps we should focus on these other areas while acknowledging that Talakeal's desires and prior actions are not the same.

GloatingSwine
2016-01-24, 10:50 AM
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this.
Basically, the GM should put stuff into the world only if it is relevant to the plot?

If the GM has framed the plot as "here is a problem, find solutions", then things that look like part of a solution should be applicable to the problem or shouldn't be involved. Don't put red herring solutions in unless you're deliberately playing a mystery investigation where they're thematically appropriate.

In this case the problem was "thing to fight", and "a large group of overgrown angry chickens" is a thing that looks a lot like part of a solution to the problem of "thing to fight".

It wasn't, it never could have been given what we now know, but the players obviously interpreted it as being so and attempted to pursue it.


The griffins were there as window dressing as far as I can tell.

Given that the intended solutions were all Big Magic, everything was window dressing. Trouble is that the window dressing looked a lot like the view the players thought they should be looking for.

Talakeal
2016-01-24, 03:38 PM
However, in my opinion you either overthink the details of your story, or you're unwilling to entertain details that you didn't think of. I saw several times that you presented the party with the scenario and had a finite list of actions they could take to succeed.

Overthink maybe. But I really don't know why people keep saying I am unwilling to entertain details that I didn't think of. Can you show me any place in my story where my players came up with a creative solution and I went out of my way to shut it down that would give you this idea?


Looking back at the statistics I posted earlier, about 25% of my sessions ended with me allowing the players to solve it in a wildly original manner that I never thought of.

What typically happens when my players CAN'T come up with an original solution or lack the specific capabilities / lucky dice rolls to brute force the problem, is some variant of the following conversation:

Me: Sorry, but you lack the strength to brute force the problem. You are going to need to try an alternate approach.
Player: So you set up a no win situation?
Me: No, it is fully winnable, it is just a challenge set up so that the most direct means is unlikely to work.
Player: Right. Ok how could I do this?
Me: How about X?
Player: Ok, yeah that would work. So you put in just one solution and are punishing me cause I can't read your mind.
Me: How about Y?
Player: Ok, I have to read your mind for TWO solutions?
Me: How about A, B, or C?
Player: OK, five solutions. So you made a multiple choice script. You are still punishing me for not following it.
Me: (Thinks for a second about what I would do as a player with their capabilities) What about D-H?
Player: Ok, so its a dozen solutions. Still not that many.
Me: (Thinks a bit longer and continues to think up possible solutions) Continues to suggest possibilities
Player: Ok, but those are all YOUR solutions, so you will let them work.


When the players tried something you didn't think would succeed, you told them point blank (and possibly out of character) that their idea had no chance of working. Knock that off.

This may be the most wildly contrary advice I have ever gotten. My initial reaction as a DM is to let the players make their own mistakes and let the solution play out as it may. And this almost always ends up with people being pissed and the session, if not the whole game, ending because everyone is so angry (and their characters are probably dead to boot).

Almost all of the advice I have ever gotten is to communicate more with the players and let them know OOC when there is a disconnect between how they are picturing either the rules or the scenario and how I picture it.

Hell, this very session one of the players told me to stop humoring him as it wastes time and gets him frustrated. He said he would have enjoyed the session a lot more if I had just said flat out "You are barking up the wrong tree, find a different approach," and this is far from the first time I have had a player tell me something similar, or flat out accuse me of being overly sadistic and punitive for not stopping them before they took an action that I knew was stupid and / or suicidal.


What I am actively trying to do is read the thread, and respond as constructively as possible to the question posed in the title: to wit, "Where did I go wrong?" I sincerely apologize if answering that question caused a problem.

Again, sorry if I am overly defensive.

Your question was essentially "If you don't like proactive or creative solutions, what is left?" And I was answering you that it still leaves room for non-creative reactive solutions, and pointing out that I don't have any problem with creative solutions, merely with one's that try and brute force things which I have set up as very difficult to brute force in the setup for the scenario, e.g. trying to defeat an invading army in combat when the whole focus of the scenario is that the enemy army is too large to defeat in combat.



Ok, this is really surprising advice. It is basically the opposite of everything my players or the internet has told me.


You are the DM, which means you are the narrator of a shared story. You provide the antagonist and his plot, and the players provide the protagonists. Note the emphasis on shared. If you tell a story that has a specified resolution and the other people telling that story with you have no way to influence the outcome, then you shouldn't be sharing your story. Write it down and publish it as a book. However, you're sharing your story and allowing other people to influence the telling of it by creating their own protagonists.

Yes, railroads are bad. I know people like to paint me as your typical control-freak / railroading DM because it is an easy cause to rally against, but that isn't me. I would love to just create a world and let it play out in sandbox fashion with the players doing whatever they want, but my players don't, and they are constantly asking me to run more linear adventures with a more fixed story.

Now, I will admit I do have a couple of cool scenes in my mind which I do want the players to experience, and I will use a bit of IC nudging or quantum ogre-ing to get them there, which might cause a bit of a problem, but it is hardly in the same realm as an already decided on an ending or just wanting an audience to tell my story to. Heck, in the adventure this thread is about I was fully prepared for the players to defect and actually join with the villains.

For example, I don't have a clue how my current campaign will end.
I suspect the players will, at some point, have missions to rescue a few of the enemy's captives and assassinate a few of his lieutenants, but no details. There will probably be a big battle at the Imperial capital, although I don't have a clue who will be fighting or what role the players will play (let alone who wins)
I have a scene where the true big bad reveals itself, although I don't know how or why it will come about or what will happen next,
I have a few ideas for possible ways that the players could meet with NPCs or former PCs from previous campaigns to find out what has happened in the intervening years
And I have a few faint ideas for how this campaign might segue into the next campaign, but they are very vague and require knowing both what the players want out of this campaign and the next one.

I also am starting to plan out the next adventure, but so far it is just a few setups for places to explore, monsters to kill, treasures to loot, and NPCs to talk to rather than any sort of story or even a problem that requires a solution.


Rather than have someone tell them "you can't do that", your players should be allowed to try anything, and you need to make an effort to disallow yourself from saying no.

How far should I take this though? As a DM my powers are near infinite, if I am actively looking for reasons why a plan "could" work I can just keep coming up with more and more implausible coincidences that allow it to happen. Basically the polar opposite of the traditional railroad / killer DM, which not only deprives the players of any sort of challenge or sense of victory, but also removes agency as their plans or their decisions in character generation are meaningless.

I know you don't actually mean for me to take it this for, I am just curious as to how far you think I should go in finding ways to make player plans work.


Finally, talk to your players. Find out what they like and don't like in an adventure or campaign, and cater to it. If it's not the type of game you want to run exclusively, try to compromise with them. It's a shared experience after all. If you can find a copy of Robin's Laws of Good Game mastering, it's worth a read, especially the part about player types and emotional kicks. The DMG 2 touches on similar topics as well, so look there too. Considering Robin D. Laws gets author credit on the cover, it should help you out.

I have read both those books. Ultimately I found them a lot less helpful than advertised. The problems they identify are fairly obvious, and Laws flat out admits that solving them is beyond the scope of his book or almost any book ever written.


The griffons ineffectually harass the enemy troops without doing them actual damage, resulting in some small percentage (say, 10%) of enemy attacks being directed at the annoying griffons until they are no longer a nuisance or the enemy is otherwise dealt with.


If that is a failure, what does a success look like? Keep in mind that these are four griffons against an entire army.


In this example it was only worth mentioning the existence of the griffons if there was a reasonable way for the players to do something with them. There wasn't, because the campaign required an extraordinary solution and even "persuade their handler to help" wasn't going to make them into a solution (and wouldn't be a satisfying solution anyway because they didn't have to adventure to get to him).

I actually created the town before I came up with the adventure. Keep in mind that the griffons were introduced in the first adventure while this thread is discussing the events of the second. The griffons were put in to show that humans have begun to domesticate normally monstrous creatures to help set the mood for the game.

The griffons could very well have had a more active role. I did bring models and write up stats for them. If one of the players had made a character with animal handling skills or they had gone to the druid rather than the lich for help they could have easily gotten the griffons to help, and if they had either attacked the lord or convinced him to break his oath and fight with them the griffons almost certainly would have played a part.

Hell, the players apparently had some sort of further plan for the griffons, convincing their handler to leave them unattended and their pen unlocked during the battle, and I was going along with it, but they never followed through with it once it became apparent that the griffons couldn't solve their problems alone.


But, on a less specific note, I have always wondered how to use "dungeon dressing" more effectively. It seems to me that a game without cosmetic descriptions is incredibly boring and bland, but I always run into situations where players mistake a thematic element for a plot hook or vice versa. I would love to read a good guide on the subject.


I have a different reading of the data. It appeared to me that Talakeal wants creative reactive but had some bad habits (insufficient information for the players, some misinformation via assumptions, too little detail for unexpected solutions) that he came to this thread for help on.

So far we have addressed and he has mostly agreed on the "less misinformation" and the "less kneejerk denials". Perhaps we should focus on these other areas while acknowledging that Talakeal's desires and prior actions are not the same.

Yeah, I do acknowledge that those are all flaws in my DMing style that I need help with.

GloatingSwine
2016-01-24, 03:59 PM
I actually created the town before I came up with the adventure. Keep in mind that the griffons were introduced in the first adventure while this thread is discussing the events of the second. The griffons were put in to show that humans have begun to domesticate normally monstrous creatures to help set the mood for the game.

The griffons could very well have had a more active role. I did bring models and write up stats for them. If one of the players had made a character with animal handling skills or they had gone to the druid rather than the lich for help they could have easily gotten the griffons to help, and if they had either attacked the lord or convinced him to break his oath and fight with them the griffons almost certainly would have played a part.

Hell, the players apparently had some sort of further plan for the griffons, convincing their handler to leave them unattended and their pen unlocked during the battle, and I was going along with it, but they never followed through with it once it became apparent that the griffons couldn't solve their problems alone.


They weren't trying to have the griffons solve their problem alone though, they still had their militia and their traps and animated objects.

What they were doing was trying to gather enough resources to win, but you were essentially always telling them "not enough", until after the point where they'd expended the available possibility space, because the only thing that would have been enough was something they could not possibly anticipate or even try and start looking for.

The players cannot anticipate an extraordinary solution, it's outside their frame of reference. If you wanted them to summon the army of ghosts then there should have been an explicit quest for them, someone in the village should have told them a tale about an army of ghosts that used to sweep away invaders in these lands, and said that it's worth a shot trying to rouse them even if they don't know quite where they are, and then they can go on a quest, encounter some challenges on the way, and then they get the army of ghosts (or they encounter the lich, druid, or dragon as part of the established quest) and use them instead.

Talakeal
2016-01-24, 04:09 PM
They weren't trying to have the griffons solve their problem alone though, they still had their militia and their traps and animated objects.

What they were doing was trying to gather enough resources to win, but you were essentially always telling them "not enough", until after the point where they'd expended the available possibility space, because the only thing that would have been enough was something they could not possibly anticipate or even try and start looking for.

The players cannot anticipate an extraordinary solution, it's outside their frame of reference. If you wanted them to summon the army of ghosts then there should have been an explicit quest for them, someone in the village should have told them a tale about an army of ghosts that used to sweep away invaders in these lands, and said that it's worth a shot trying to rouse them even if they don't know quite where they are, and then they can go on a quest, encounter some challenges on the way, and then they get the army of ghosts (or they encounter the lich, druid, or dragon as part of the established quest) and use them instead.

Agreed.

I had hoped that the previous days adventure which was all about those elements would still be fresh enough in their mind for them to make the connection without being prodded, but I was wrong. I knew this was a flaw in the adventure going into it and am still kicking myself over it, its my mistake and I wholly own up to it.

Amphetryon
2016-01-24, 04:29 PM
If that is a failure, what does a success look like? Keep in mind that these are four griffons against an entire army.They wanted to ride the griffons. They wanted the griffons to be effective in actually damaging the enemy. None of that was a part of my off-the-cuff proposal. Do you not see the difference between their proposal's "success" and the possibility that some small percentage of attacks against the town goes against the griffons? Really?

Talakeal
2016-01-24, 04:52 PM
They wanted to ride the griffons. They wanted the griffons to be effective in actually damaging the enemy. None of that was a part of my off-the-cuff proposal. Do you not see the difference between their proposal's "success" and the possibility that some small percentage of attacks against the town goes against the griffons? Really?

I guess we are talking about two totally different things then. It seems like I thought we were talking about the difficulty of getting the griffons under control while you are talking about the combat power of the griffons.


In this case they wanted to use the griffons for something (I honestly don't know what)*, and asked if they could control them. I said it is possible, looked at their character sheets, and said "But no one in the party has anything even remotely resembling skills or abilities at handling or controlling animals. In fact two of you have background elements that say animals are automatically hostile to you. The odds of you getting these griffons to follow you is negligible, and by trying you are risking a serious mauling which you can ill afford if you plan on going into battle tomorrow. They then asked the handler if he could command them in battle, he said no, he was just a stable hand and didn't take part on the actually hunts, he just fed them and cleaned up their poop and tried not to get bit. They asked if he would mind leaving their cages unlocked and finding something else to do during the battle, succeeded at a diplomacy test, and he said "sure."


The griffons are 4 CR 4 monsters against an army with hundreds of members, a few of which are powerful enough to take all four of the griffons in a straight fight. Having them occupy (or possibly even kill, frankly it doesn't matter as the players goal was to protect the town, not kill the invaders) ~10% of the enemy forces on a successful animal handling check is perfectly reasonable in my mind.

What is NOT reasonable is having them inflict significant casualties on a superior force or to have them follow the party on a failed roll. This would mean that A: A successful handle animal roll allows the players to ignore the combat mechanics for the game and that B: You can still take control of monsters on a failed handle animal roll, they just don't automatically gain a massive power boost.


Imagine if it was just a regular dungeon crawl and one of your players said "Hey, can I convince the Orc on level one to kill the dragon on level 10 for me?" And you said "Ok, tell you what, roll diplomacy. On a success he can attack the dragon, injuring or possibly even killing it on his own, while on a failure he will merely help you by distracting it and taking the hits while you fight it but can't / won't try and take it out on his own," this is, imo, making a mockery out of both the combat and the diplomacy rules.




*At one point during the discussion one player said "Why don't we just hop on the griffons and fly away?" at which point I said "You are too heavy for them to carry," and the other two players said "We aren't abandoning the town, quit looking for excuses to give up," and that was the end of it. But that wasn't the player's plan with the griffons, I frankly don't know what that was.

NichG
2016-01-24, 05:51 PM
Imagine that now the PCs were on the side of the invading army, and think about how you would run the encounter with the village in the following case:

There is a small village whose lord has commanded the militia not to fight. For the most part, things are a push-over, except for a couple of mostly annoying traps and the like, so the army gets to the business of looting and scatters throughout the village. The PCs' group comes upon a place where 4 domesticated gryphons have been released from their cages and are just kind of hanging around their nest/food supply/etc. What happens next?

Would you have the gryphons potentially fight the PCs, despite the lack of any human there to actually command them to do so?

Thrudd
2016-01-24, 05:52 PM
I guess we are talking about two totally different things then. It seems like I thought we were talking about the difficulty of getting the griffons under control while you are talking about the combat power of the griffons.


In this case they wanted to use the griffons for something (I honestly don't know what)*, and asked if they could control them. I said it is possible, looked at their character sheets, and said "But no one in the party has anything even remotely resembling skills or abilities at handling or controlling animals. In fact two of you have background elements that say animals are automatically hostile to you. The odds of you getting these griffons to follow you is negligible, and by trying you are risking a serious mauling which you can ill afford if you plan on going into battle tomorrow. They then asked the handler if he could command them in battle, he said no, he was just a stable hand and didn't take part on the actually hunts, he just fed them and cleaned up their poop and tried not to get bit. They asked if he would mind leaving their cages unlocked and finding something else to do during the battle, succeeded at a diplomacy test, and he said "sure."


The griffons are 4 CR 4 monsters against an army with hundreds of members, a few of which are powerful enough to take all four of the griffons in a straight fight. Having them occupy (or possibly even kill, frankly it doesn't matter as the players goal was to protect the town, not kill the invaders) ~10% of the enemy forces on a successful animal handling check is perfectly reasonable in my mind.

What is NOT reasonable is having them inflict significant casualties on a superior force or to have them follow the party on a failed roll. This would mean that A: A successful handle animal roll allows the players to ignore the combat mechanics for the game and that B: You can still take control of monsters on a failed handle animal roll, they just don't automatically gain a massive power boost.


Imagine if it was just a regular dungeon crawl and one of your players said "Hey, can I convince the Orc on level one to kill the dragon on level 10 for me?" And you said "Ok, tell you what, roll diplomacy. On a success he can attack the dragon, injuring or possibly even killing it on his own, while on a failure he will merely help you by distracting it and taking the hits while you fight it but can't / won't try and take it out on his own," this is, imo, making a mockery out of both the combat and the diplomacy rules.




*At one point during the discussion one player said "Why don't we just hop on the griffons and fly away?" at which point I said "You are too heavy for them to carry," and the other two players said "We aren't abandoning the town, quit looking for excuses to give up," and that was the end of it. But that wasn't the player's plan with the griffons, I frankly don't know what that was.

Ever see "Zulu"? The fictionalized tale of the battle of Rourke's Drift. 4000 Zulu warriors attack an outpost of a couple hundred British soldiers. At one point the cattle pen gets left open (by accident) and the cows/buffalo stampede during the battle, ending the Zulu attack for the day. Maybe they hoped the griffons would get riled up and go crazy on the attackers, having a similar result. I might think the same thing, if I were doing everything I could think of to hurt or delay attackers. Obviously it won't win the battle, but if I'm committed to staying and fighting I want to weaponize everything and anything I can find.

The real problem overall was that the players didn't connect info from the first session with the problem faced in the second. You know that already, it is just a matter of communicating clearly and perhaps being more obvious than you think is necessary.

DarkSoul
2016-01-24, 07:47 PM
Overthink maybe. But I really don't know why people keep saying I am unwilling to entertain details that I didn't think of. Can you show me any place in my story where my players came up with a creative solution and I went out of my way to shut it down that would give you this idea?

Like I said, these are impressions that I got reading over everything. The whole "here are the three solutions that I've decided will work" part is what gave me that first impression.


What typically happens when my players CAN'T come up with an original solution or lack the specific capabilities / lucky dice rolls to brute force the problem, is some variant of the following conversation:

Me: Sorry, but you lack the strength to brute force the problem. You are going to need to try an alternate approach.
Player: So you set up a no win situation?
Me: No, it is fully winnable, it is just a challenge set up so that the most direct means is unlikely to work.
Player: Right. Ok how could I do this?
Me: How about X?
Player: Ok, yeah that would work. So you put in just one solution and are punishing me cause I can't read your mind.
Me: How about Y?
Player: Ok, I have to read your mind for TWO solutions?
Me: How about A, B, or C?
Player: OK, five solutions. So you made a multiple choice script. You are still punishing me for not following it.
Me: (Thinks for a second about what I would do as a player with their capabilities) What about D-H?
Player: Ok, so its a dozen solutions. Still not that many.
Me: (Thinks a bit longer and continues to think up possible solutions) Continues to suggest possibilities
Player: Ok, but those are all YOUR solutions, so you will let them work.

Those are some antagonistic players you have there, and I understand your frustrations if conversations like that are anything remotely close to common. If you're dealing with this on a regular basis, it's a big part of the issues you're experiencing, and you can rest assured that the problem doesn't lie with you.


This may be the most wildly contrary advice I have ever gotten. My initial reaction as a DM is to let the players make their own mistakes and let the solution play out as it may. And this almost always ends up with people being pissed and the session, if not the whole game, ending because everyone is so angry (and their characters are probably dead to boot).

Almost all of the advice I have ever gotten is to communicate more with the players and let them know OOC when there is a disconnect between how they are picturing either the rules or the scenario and how I picture it.

Hell, this very session one of the players told me to stop humoring him as it wastes time and gets him frustrated. He said he would have enjoyed the session a lot more if I had just said flat out "You are barking up the wrong tree, find a different approach," and this is far from the first time I have had a player tell me something similar, or flat out accuse me of being overly sadistic and punitive for not stopping them before they took an action that I knew was stupid and / or suicidal.

Personally, I try to make the communications to the players come from in-game sources, rather than stopping everyone and saying "No no no, this is not going to work. Think of something else". I try to have NPCs around when they're planning who will look at them like they're insane if they suggest something that makes them sound like they really are. I'm not saying let them follow obviously-unworkable plans through to the bitter end, but rather to find ways in-game to let them know it will end badly for them.

If there's a disconnect between how you envision something and how your players do, then yes, stopping the game and saying "No, this is how the situation actually is." is appropriate.

Based on the player telling you to stop humoring him it sounds like you not only have antagonistic players, but ones that actually appreciate a bit of railroading, based on what you said here:


Yes, railroads are bad. I know people like to paint me as your typical control-freak / railroading DM because it is an easy cause to rally against, but that isn't me. I would love to just create a world and let it play out in sandbox fashion with the players doing whatever they want, but my players don't, and they are constantly asking me to run more linear adventures with a more fixed story.

Now, I will admit I do have a couple of cool scenes in my mind which I do want the players to experience, and I will use a bit of IC nudging or quantum ogre-ing to get them there, which might cause a bit of a problem, but it is hardly in the same realm as an already decided on an ending or just wanting an audience to tell my story to. Heck, in the adventure this thread is about I was fully prepared for the players to defect and actually join with the villains.

For example, I don't have a clue how my current campaign will end.
I suspect the players will, at some point, have missions to rescue a few of the enemy's captives and assassinate a few of his lieutenants, but no details. There will probably be a big battle at the Imperial capital, although I don't have a clue who will be fighting or what role the players will play (let alone who wins)
I have a scene where the true big bad reveals itself, although I don't know how or why it will come about or what will happen next,
I have a few ideas for possible ways that the players could meet with NPCs or former PCs from previous campaigns to find out what has happened in the intervening years
And I have a few faint ideas for how this campaign might segue into the next campaign, but they are very vague and require knowing both what the players want out of this campaign and the next one.

I also am starting to plan out the next adventure, but so far it is just a few setups for places to explore, monsters to kill, treasures to loot, and NPCs to talk to rather than any sort of story or even a problem that requires a solution.

Keep those scenes in mind, and use them as the major plot points in your adventure/campaign arc. Let the players help you fill in the details about how they get there. To go back to the scenario you had with the raiders about to overrun the village, treat it as a smaller scale version of your campaign plots. Instead of saying "this is going to play out like this, and there's nothing the characters can do about it", try to shift into a "this is going to play out like this, unless the players come up with something really good to do about it". Then, judge their plans on their own merits and if something sounds reasonable, run with it. It keeps your players engaged and keeps you from agonizing over the details of the three exact ways the characters can "win". Again, though, if the players don't come up with anything that sounds reasonable try to convey that information in-game.


How far should I take this though? As a DM my powers are near infinite, if I am actively looking for reasons why a plan "could" work I can just keep coming up with more and more implausible coincidences that allow it to happen. Basically the polar opposite of the traditional railroad / killer DM, which not only deprives the players of any sort of challenge or sense of victory, but also removes agency as their plans or their decisions in character generation are meaningless.

I know you don't actually mean for me to take it this for, I am just curious as to how far you think I should go in finding ways to make player plans work.

Think of it as a check to avoid knee-jerk denials. When the players say "We want to charge their front lines", before you laugh, take a second to think if there's a way they could possibly succeed. If there isn't, fine. Your response should still be "you can try". Then put NPCs in the game that look at them like they're insane, or have another group try it shortly before they get a chance, and have them cut down by arrow fire before they get ten paces out of the gate. Maybe there's a way they can sneak out and take out a few troops, maybe a minor officer before they're discovered and driven back. They still got to try, and if they manage to kill anyone important, no matter how minor that person is, they can still count it as a victory, get some intelligence on the army, some xp and some loot for themselves, and then they can move on to more sound plans.

I'm not saying let everything they suggest work, but don't just deny them the chance to even try.


I have read both those books. Ultimately I found them a lot less helpful than advertised. The problems they identify are fairly obvious, and Laws flat out admits that solving them is beyond the scope of his book or almost any book ever written.

Reading through them prompted me to start with a short series of questions about what the players like and dislike in their games to get an idea what kinds of adventures I should include. It sounds like finding out what player types you have and what their kicks are would help you understand the types of players you're dealing with.


I actually created the town before I came up with the adventure. Keep in mind that the griffons were introduced in the first adventure while this thread is discussing the events of the second. The griffons were put in to show that humans have begun to domesticate normally monstrous creatures to help set the mood for the game.

The griffons could very well have had a more active role. I did bring models and write up stats for them. If one of the players had made a character with animal handling skills or they had gone to the druid rather than the lich for help they could have easily gotten the griffons to help, and if they had either attacked the lord or convinced him to break his oath and fight with them the griffons almost certainly would have played a part.

Hell, the players apparently had some sort of further plan for the griffons, convincing their handler to leave them unattended and their pen unlocked during the battle, and I was going along with it, but they never followed through with it once it became apparent that the griffons couldn't solve their problems alone.

But, on a less specific note, I have always wondered how to use "dungeon dressing" more effectively. It seems to me that a game without cosmetic descriptions is incredibly boring and bland, but I always run into situations where players mistake a thematic element for a plot hook or vice versa. I would love to read a good guide on the subject.

My response to this, and this comment by Kalmageddon:


I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this.
Basically, the GM should put stuff into the world only if it is relevant to the plot?

...is "Chekov's Gun". Here's a link if you've never heard of it

(http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovsGun) You mention at the end of your post that you have flaws in your DM style that you'd like to work on. Have you read any blogs, newsletters, etc., on the subject of improving your DM style or at least addressing your problems? I've been subscribed to roleplayingtips.com's newsletter for years and occasionally I'll find a real gem that I try to incorporate.

You may have flaws to work on, but I think your players not really thinking for themselves is a big part of the issue as well. You may end up just needing to cater to their styles and try to enjoy a more linear game, if the alternative is to not play at all.

LnGrrrR
2016-01-25, 01:03 PM
I think if I had a player like the one Talakeal is describing, I'd stop the game OOCly and say, "If you were in my shoes, how would you run this?" or something similar. A player that does what Talakeal described is being very obviously antagonistic. So flip the script and ask what that player would consider fair. See if he can define it for himself. Asking the players what they want is also a good idea, then take note of their answers. If they later on say, "We wanted X!", and that contradicts with what they previously stated, call them on it and ask them to explain the inconsistency. If they continue to fuss, pout and fume, then kick them out.

Segev
2016-01-25, 01:41 PM
I think if I had a player like the one Talakeal is describing, I'd stop the game OOCly and say, "If you were in my shoes, how would you run this?" or something similar. A player that does what Talakeal described is being very obviously antagonistic. So flip the script and ask what that player would consider fair. See if he can define it for himself. Asking the players what they want is also a good idea, then take note of their answers. If they later on say, "We wanted X!", and that contradicts with what they previously stated, call them on it and ask them to explain the inconsistency. If they continue to fuss, pout and fume, then kick them out.

The one trouble with this is that I know a fair number of players who would just say "I would let [that player's plan] work."

LnGrrrR
2016-01-25, 01:55 PM
More specifically, I'd ask a player how many "solutions" are acceptable to them. And if you have players that want want want, then just let them get EVERYTHING without any work whatsoever. And hey, if they enjoy that style, just tell them to come up with the story and you can go grab snacks or something :D

NichG
2016-01-25, 01:58 PM
I find the correct thing to do when that situation comes up during game is to not engage in the meta discussion at all. Keep it concrete, keep it focused on what the characters are doing in-game. Going meta like that gives the impression that the correct way to solve an in-game problem is to negotiate with the DM. Its fine to do the post-game analysis later, but wait until the situation has actually concluded one way or another so that the players have a clean separation between the process of giving feedback and the process of actually playing.

Also, sometimes the right thing to do if nothing is clicking is to end the session early and just give people a week to cool off and become more objective about things. I've had times when one player was just grumpy for unrelated-to-game reasons, and it spilled over into this sort of pessimism. Don't take feedback during those periods, because basically the feedback you get has nothing to do with the real problem (and often just makes things worse).

LnGrrrR
2016-01-25, 02:26 PM
I find the correct thing to do when that situation comes up during game is to not engage in the meta discussion at all. Keep it concrete, keep it focused on what the characters are doing in-game. Going meta like that gives the impression that the correct way to solve an in-game problem is to negotiate with the DM. Its fine to do the post-game analysis later, but wait until the situation has actually concluded one way or another so that the players have a clean separation between the process of giving feedback and the process of actually playing.

Also, sometimes the right thing to do if nothing is clicking is to end the session early and just give people a week to cool off and become more objective about things. I've had times when one player was just grumpy for unrelated-to-game reasons, and it spilled over into this sort of pessimism. Don't take feedback during those periods, because basically the feedback you get has nothing to do with the real problem (and often just makes things worse).

That's good advice. I'm glad I game with people who are relatively stable. :)

goto124
2016-01-26, 01:59 AM
@NichG: What if it's PbP, where 'sessions' don't really exist? :smalltongue:

NichG
2016-01-26, 05:47 AM
@NichG: What if it's PbP, where 'sessions' don't really exist? :smalltongue:

I'd guess the same principle applies - don't negotiate OOC while the situation is still up in the air IC. Once its settled and done, then you can discuss about next time if the player still takes issue. Also, its good to say 'thanks for the feedback, I'll take that into account for next time' rather than argue or get into details if it seems like you're going in circles or nothing you say can really make things better. Certainly don't get defensive.

Now as far as taking a break, you can always take a hiatus for a week. If you're in a situation where you have a player holding some kind of eternal grumpy disposition unrelated to game, then you're basically going to just have to ignore it (nothing to be done for it) or if its making it impossible to keep game from degenerating then at that point you should ask the player to leave.

goto124
2016-01-26, 06:11 AM
I'd guess the same principle applies - don't negotiate OOC while the situation is still up in the air IC.

Considering how many RPs I've participated in that have crashed and burned midway through, I really don't think I've ever reached a point where the situation got out of the "up in the air IC" stage before everything ended anyway.

NichG
2016-01-26, 06:20 AM
Considering how many RPs I've participated in that have crashed and burned midway through, I really don't think I've ever reached a point where the situation got out of the "up in the air IC" stage before everything ended anyway.

This is the thing about PbP that tends to make me dubious. Its hard enough to hold a game together in person, harder still to do an online game over Skype or Roll20 without people not taking it as seriously, but something as dispersed and asynchronous as PbP just seems doomed.

GrayGriffin
2016-01-26, 01:14 PM
Honestly? Most of my PBP games have ended not because of people not posting, but because the GM got burned out. You know, something that happens in both live and PBP games?

Talakeal
2016-01-26, 02:12 PM
On a side note, while I was looking at the differences between griffons and hippogriffs for this thread I noticed something.

They have the same body shape save that griffons have rear claws and hippogriffs have rear hooves.

They have the same ability scores except that a griffon is slightly smarter.

Griffons weigh about 500 pounds while hippogriffs weight about 1,000 pounds.


Now, when we get down to numbers; griffons have a pounce and rake attack (makes sense, cause of the claws)


And then the major difference, hippogriffs are much faster, but griffons have double the HD.

That seems really weird to me. When you have to creatures with the same body shape and ability scores, shouldn't the smaller one be faster and the larger one have double the HD?

what's up with that?

OldTrees1
2016-01-26, 03:21 PM
On a side note, while I was looking at the differences between griffons and hippogriffs for this thread I noticed something.

They have the same body shape save that griffons have read claws and hippogriffs have rear hooves.

They have the same ability scores except that a griffon is slightly smarter.

Griffons weigh about 500 pounds while hippogriffs weight about 1,000 pounds.


Now, when we get down to numbers; griffons have a pounce and rake attack (makes sense, cause of the claws)


And then the major difference, hippogriffs are much faster, but griffons have double the HD.

That seems really weird to me. When you have to creatures with the same body shape and ability scores, shouldn't the smaller one be faster and the larger one have double the HD?

what's up with that?

You forgot to look at the component animals. One is an eagle/lion the other is an eagle/horse.

Talakeal
2016-01-26, 03:44 PM
You forgot to look at the component animals. One is an eagle/lion the other is an eagle/horse.

No, I looked at them, that just made for an even weirder experience.

The relationship between animal size and HD seems very inconsistent.

OldTrees1
2016-01-26, 04:28 PM
No, I looked at them, that just made for an even weirder experience.

The relationship between animal size and HD seems very inconsistent.

I'm missing it. Both are the same size(although different weights) and have speed/HD that correlates with the faster Horse and hardier Lion.

Talakeal
2016-01-26, 05:55 PM
I'm missing it. Both are the same size(although different weights) and have speed/HD that correlates with the faster Horse and hardier Lion.

I don't know, I would more quickly describe a horse as "hardy" than a lion, and their mammalian halves shouldn't have too much to do with their flight speed and the damage of their eagle portions.

They are both described as aggressive, territorial, and predatory, and they both fight using the beak and claws of an eagle. Its not like the difference between a lion, an active hunter which has claws and predatory teeth, and a horse which is an herbivore with hooves and blunt teeth.

It just seems weird to me that the bite of a 1,000 pound animal with an eagle's head is significantly less dangerous than the bite of a 500 pound animal with an eagle's head, and that the 500 animal can take almost 3x the punishment of a 1,000 pound animal with the same body shape and constitution score.


I guess it is just a symptom of the larger HP as combat skill vs. HP as meat argument, but it crops up in some weird places in the MM. For example irl an Orca is just about the most dangerous predator in the sea and regularly eats the much smaller great white shark, yet in D&D the shark has a 2 HD advantage over the orca, and the elephant, which is an herbivore and roughly the same size as the orca, has more HD than either.

goto124
2016-01-26, 09:05 PM
It's a world of magic where griffons and hippogriffs can exist at all, of course the animals would be different from RL.

Squibsallotl
2016-01-26, 09:58 PM
Hey Talakeal,

Fellow DM here. By way of credentials, I've been DMing for almost 6 years and have run two epic campaigns (the first lasted about 2 years but didn't get to completion, due to RL scheduling/player location issues, while the second went for almost 4 years and just recently finished).

Rather than try to address any specific issues with your first game (as this has already been covered by previous posts) I'd like to give you some general advice in order to help ensure your players have fun. That's the keyword here: Fun. It helps to remember that your first and pre-eminent role as the DM is to facilitate the other players to have fun.

And what makes a game "fun" varies greatly from player to player. Your first job on starting a new campaign should be to try and identify what the group (and each player) wants, and then designing a game around it.

Phase 1: what does the group want?
I generally ask a new group the following questions.

RP/Combat balance. Do you want:
A) heavy combat
B) heavy roleplay
C) about an equal mix?

Tone/Seriousness. Do you want:
A) light fantasy (comedy/humour, your actions have minor consequences)
B) standard fantasy (some comedy, some serious themes, your actions have moderate consequences)
C) gritty/dark fantasy (mostly serious, your actions can have dramatic consequences)

That will give you the basics as to what the players want as a group. A light fantasy/heavy combat group for instance might appreciate a good hack'N'slash dungeon with comedic elements, but without much real danger. A dark fantasy group/heavy roleplay might enjoy playing as vampire lords vying for an unholy throne, or desperate heroes trying to save a world that already appears doomed.

Phase 2: what does each player want?
Ask your players for a brief back-story for their characters. Even if its a only a paragraph or two, insist on it. It will give you character-specific plot hooks to get players personally involved, and will give you an insight into that player's mindset and goals for their character. You could even ask players what RPG games they have played and enjoyed in the past, to give you more of an idea what they prefer.

Phase 3: designing the game
Now that you have all this data, you need to design a game around it. That's not easy, and your first few sessions will often get some elements right and some wrong. You will also learn more about each of your players during the first few games and get more of a handle on what type of gamers they are. I've often found most players will meet one or two stereotypes:
http://dustin.wikidot.com/player-types

Lets say you have a roleplay/combat mix, standard fantasy group that includes a storyteller, a slayer, a watcher, and an instigator.

The storyteller will value RP and good plot/worldbuilding the most. Make sure to include at least one element of story progression or RP each session.
The slayer will quickly get bored of too much story or RP. Make sure to include at least one good fight each game. If the storyteller solves an encounter through diplomacy, maybe have another fight prepared where your PCs and the former enemy they've just converted can team up against something bigger and badder.
The instigator will push boundaries every game, just to see what happens. Prepare surprises (both good and nasty) which have either beneficial, humorous or dangerous-feeling (re: exciting) repercussions. Avoid things that are too deadly, unless you are at an adventure or story apex.
The watcher will have fun if the above three are having fun. As soon as the instigator gets angry that he's triggering too many "overpowered" traps, or the slayer gets bored, or the storyteller starts feeling railroaded, the watcher will start looking uncomfortable and/or make an excuse to leave, bringing the whole group down.

With all that in mind, this group needs a solid story to pursue, with frequent (but not constant) mid-range combat challenges, some of which can be solved or bypassed by RP, as well as hidden loot/low-risk traps/damsels in distress/new plot hooks to discover.

A good foundation for a new campaign, and one that's likely to please the group. A party of 4 slayers opting for dark fantasy obviously looks very different, as does a group of explorer/actors. Tailor the game to the players and everyone wins! :)

LnGrrrR
2016-01-27, 09:49 AM
On a side note, while I was looking at the differences between griffons and hippogriffs for this thread I noticed something.

They have the same body shape save that griffons have rear claws and hippogriffs have rear hooves.

They have the same ability scores except that a griffon is slightly smarter.

Griffons weigh about 500 pounds while hippogriffs weight about 1,000 pounds.


Now, when we get down to numbers; griffons have a pounce and rake attack (makes sense, cause of the claws)


And then the major difference, hippogriffs are much faster, but griffons have double the HD.

That seems really weird to me. When you have to creatures with the same body shape and ability scores, shouldn't the smaller one be faster and the larger one have double the HD?

what's up with that?

It's magic, therefore, a wizard did it. I wouldn't put too much stock into the physics of magic in a world, considering that magic breaks the laws of physics.

slowplay
2016-01-27, 11:38 AM
So your saying it has to do with not meeting expectations rather than a matter of railroading? Hmm, had not thought about that, good point.

The idea was that there was all this ancient history and power around the region that the adults had never bothered to notice or even believe in. The players were the only ones with the courage and curiosity to actually explore their homes.

This is an interesting problem: DM and player expectations. I have found that you cannot over front load campaign planning on either side of the screen. That is to say, time spent before the game in active discussion between DM and palyers directly correlates to an improved game experience for both parties.

Rezzing a lich to defend a town of innocents is not the most intuitive nor heroic solution to a band of invading humanoids. I would probably not have made that leap as a player depending on what pre-game info had been disclosed by the DM. My default assumption would be that the lich would slaughter the townsfolk, invaders, and players not necissarily in that order.

So, if you are rock solid on a given outcome, then everything you do or plan should weave that outcome into it. Maybe when talking to the mayor, he mentions a historical tidbit pointing out the lich will work and/or why. They go to the tavern and hear gossip, find a book, meet a hermit with knowledge, etc etc. That stuff is all pretty heavy handed, but with experience you can become much more subtle and sneaky.

Depending on how much real-time you have you can let the players totally walk away from the town and later work in hooks to bring them back. Badits take over, use villagers as slaves, players are busy elsewhere and find something pointing them back to the lich.

The other important piece, I think, is what the players expected when they sat down to roll some dice at the first session. Did they know the theme of "ancient history and power?" That's a great theme by the way! So, being aware of that might have influenced character mechanic choices and more importantly, personality choice. If a player posits a concept for a Chunk type who is too afraid to explore ancient ruins, then there better be a Mikey with an adventurous spirit to drag him along. Chunk's player also should be ready to get into the ancient history and power, or have another reason to go along with the group when they do.

Now, I think the lich as the pivotal point of your adventure could use a tune up. My first thought was the crusaders who killed the lich. Now, there are some chaps who: are ancient, historical, and have a reason (with the village in danger) to attone for their cannibalism. Maybe they could have helped the players and then ascended, with the ancient curse on their souls lifted. They could make lots of food puns like, "I hunger for release." Haha idk.

Tl;dr: if the players know what the game is going to be, they will play it bettah.

Hth
-slow

Talakeal
2016-01-27, 02:31 PM
Rezzing a lich to defend a town of innocents is not the most intuitive nor heroic solution to a band of invading humanoids. I would probably not have made that leap as a player depending on what pre-game info had been disclosed by the DM. My default assumption would be that the lich would slaughter the townsfolk, invaders, and players not necissarily in that order.

So, if you are rock solid on a given outcome, then everything you do or plan should weave that outcome into it. Maybe when talking to the mayor, he mentions a historical tidbit pointing out the lich will work and/or why. They go to the tavern and hear gossip, find a book, meet a hermit with knowledge, etc etc. That stuff is all pretty heavy handed, but with experience you can become much more subtle and sneaky.

Now, I think the lich as the pivotal point of your adventure could use a tune up. My first thought was the crusaders who killed the lich. Now, there are some chaps who: are ancient, historical, and have a reason (with the village in danger) to attone for their cannibalism. Maybe they could have helped the players and then ascended, with the ancient curse on their souls lifted. They could make lots of food puns like, "I hunger for release." Haha idk.

Tl;dr: if the players know what the game is going to be, they will play it bettah.

The crusaders who killed the lich WERE the key provided to solving the adventure, and they DID help the PCs and then ascend. The lich was just one of the (many) routes that the players could have taken to get them to help.

The players thought they could control the lich because they had its phylactery and an NPC told them it could be used to compel the creature.

Also keep in mind that this wasn't the whole game, it was just a single session. Discussing the theme of each adventure seems like too much naval gazing, especially when you only have limited time to play.



It's magic, therefore, a wizard did it. I wouldn't put too much stock into the physics of magic in a world, considering that magic breaks the laws of physics.

Ultimately the answer is, of course, because the designers said so. That just seems like such a copout to me, I wish I could see the method to their madness.


Hey Talakeal,

Fellow DM here. By way of credentials, I've been DMing for almost 6 years and have run two epic campaigns (the first lasted about 2 years but didn't get to completion, due to RL scheduling/player location issues, while the second went for almost 4 years and just recently finished).

Rather than try to address any specific issues with your first game (as this has already been covered by previous posts) I'd like to give you some general advice in order to help ensure your players have fun. That's the keyword here: Fun. It helps to remember that your first and pre-eminent role as the DM is to facilitate the other players to have fun.

And what makes a game "fun" varies greatly from player to player. Your first job on starting a new campaign should be to try and identify what the group (and each player) wants, and then designing a game around it.

Phase 1: what does the group want?
I generally ask a new group the following questions.

RP/Combat balance. Do you want:
A) heavy combat
B) heavy roleplay
C) about an equal mix?

Tone/Seriousness. Do you want:
A) light fantasy (comedy/humour, your actions have minor consequences)
B) standard fantasy (some comedy, some serious themes, your actions have moderate consequences)
C) gritty/dark fantasy (mostly serious, your actions can have dramatic consequences)

That will give you the basics as to what the players want as a group. A light fantasy/heavy combat group for instance might appreciate a good hack'N'slash dungeon with comedic elements, but without much real danger. A dark fantasy group/heavy roleplay might enjoy playing as vampire lords vying for an unholy throne, or desperate heroes trying to save a world that already appears doomed.

Phase 2: what does each player want?
Ask your players for a brief back-story for their characters. Even if its a only a paragraph or two, insist on it. It will give you character-specific plot hooks to get players personally involved, and will give you an insight into that player's mindset and goals for their character. You could even ask players what RPG games they have played and enjoyed in the past, to give you more of an idea what they prefer.

Phase 3: designing the game
Now that you have all this data, you need to design a game around it. That's not easy, and your first few sessions will often get some elements right and some wrong. You will also learn more about each of your players during the first few games and get more of a handle on what type of gamers they are. I've often found most players will meet one or two stereotypes:
http://dustin.wikidot.com/player-types

Lets say you have a roleplay/combat mix, standard fantasy group that includes a storyteller, a slayer, a watcher, and an instigator.

The storyteller will value RP and good plot/worldbuilding the most. Make sure to include at least one element of story progression or RP each session.
The slayer will quickly get bored of too much story or RP. Make sure to include at least one good fight each game. If the storyteller solves an encounter through diplomacy, maybe have another fight prepared where your PCs and the former enemy they've just converted can team up against something bigger and badder.
The instigator will push boundaries every game, just to see what happens. Prepare surprises (both good and nasty) which have either beneficial, humorous or dangerous-feeling (re: exciting) repercussions. Avoid things that are too deadly, unless you are at an adventure or story apex.
The watcher will have fun if the above three are having fun. As soon as the instigator gets angry that he's triggering too many "overpowered" traps, or the slayer gets bored, or the storyteller starts feeling railroaded, the watcher will start looking uncomfortable and/or make an excuse to leave, bringing the whole group down.

With all that in mind, this group needs a solid story to pursue, with frequent (but not constant) mid-range combat challenges, some of which can be solved or bypassed by RP, as well as hidden loot/low-risk traps/damsels in distress/new plot hooks to discover.

A good foundation for a new campaign, and one that's likely to please the group. A party of 4 slayers opting for dark fantasy obviously looks very different, as does a group of explorer/actors. Tailor the game to the players and everyone wins! :)

Thank you for taking the time to write up such a long and helpful response!

I have tried similar things in the past. Everyone says they are a "mix" of combat and role-play and except for one guy who is a hardcore power gamer nobody can decide on their style. Its a lot less helpful than it looks, although it is good to know the basics.

Also, I think one big problem that I have is that I am not really capable of running light fantasy, and even my standard fantasy ends up a bit dark. One complain I have often had from my players is that I can't handle silliness, and that I don't let them get away with hijinks. A lot of players just want to play pranks on NPCs or act like clowns, and I never know how to deal with this. During the session in question, for example, I had one player swearing like a sailor and calling every male NPC one of several slurs for women, homosexuals, or effeminate men that I can't repeat here and slapping female NPCs on the butt, and I just didn't know how to respond.



On a side note; In the game where I am a player we recently switched systems and my character took a drastic hit in power. This really upset me, to the point where the group actually threatened to kick me out if I continued complaining, but my complains had nothing to do with my character's effectiveness. Instead the character simply didn't match the image of the character I had in my mind, was no longer able to use thematic abilities, and no longer had the abilities necessary to achieve her IC goals. I normally consider myself an "actor" type player, but in this case I feel that my "actor" desires are actually looking a hell of a lot more like those of a power gamer; I guess things aren't always quite so clear cut.

Squibsallotl
2016-01-27, 04:05 PM
Thank you for taking the time to write up such a long and helpful response!

No problem :)


I have tried similar things in the past. Everyone says they are a "mix" of combat and role-play and except for one guy who is a hardcore power gamer nobody can decide on their style. Its a lot less helpful than it looks, although it is good to know the basics.

True, especially players who are brand new to tabletop RPGs often won't know what style of game they prefer. Just asking the question is helpful though, because it gets the players thinking and helps set expectations. If they mull it over and decide they want a mix, and then complain after a few sessions that there isn't enough story elements (or enough combat) you can turn around and say, "No probs, we'll move on from mixed to a heavier combat/roleplay style."

This makes them aware you're working with them. You're giving them what they want, or at least what they've told you they want.


Also, I think one big problem that I have is that I am not really capable of running light fantasy, and even my standard fantasy ends up a bit dark. One complain I have often had from my players is that I can't handle silliness, and that I don't let them get away with hijinks. A lot of players just want to play pranks on NPCs or act like clowns, and I never know how to deal with this. During the session in question, for example, I had one player swearing like a sailor and calling every male NPC one of several slurs for women, homosexuals, or effeminate men that I can't repeat here and slapping female NPCs on the butt, and I just didn't know how to respond.

The trick to running light fantasy is to not take yourself too seriously. Which is very difficult as a new DM - you're self-conscious about the game, you're worried that the players might not be enjoying themselves, you've over-prepped everything, and you may not be used to roleplaying comic characters or situations.

The swearing player, for instance, might run into a skipper or former navy officer who scoffs at him. "My grand-children can swear better than you, whelp." If the player gets more creative (or viler) with his insults, the officer could look more impressed. "Not bad, not bad. Maybe I judged you too harshly, that was spoken like a true seafarer. My crew and I were looking for X to help with Y, and you might just be the man for the job..."

Suddenly his profanity has turned into a job opportunity, and may be an in-road to establishing a reputation with the sailors or navy.

Alternatively it could trigger a bar brawl, as the boyfriend or husband of the female NPC he slapped in the ass takes it personally. But in the commotion - amid breaking tables and fists flying everywhere - a couple of would-be assassins that were hiding in the inn watching the party get clocked over the head and pass out, allowing them to be captured and interrogated.


I normally consider myself an "actor" type player, but in this case I feel that my "actor" desires are actually looking a hell of a lot more like those of a power gamer; I guess things aren't always quite so clear cut.

Players can be more than one "type", for sure, and can even change their preference over time based on the group or your style of DMing. I had a Slayer in my last campaign that eventually turned into an Actor, a Watcher who turned into a Thinker, and an Instigator who... largely remained an Instigator :P The type system is really just a tool for you to keep an eye on what players are doing and what they seem to enjoy, and making sure you include elements of gameplay to appeal to them.

That's the real differentiator between tabletop RPGs and computer games. In the latter you have a pre-programmed game world with set quests, set characters, and stories that only branch X number of ways. The designers do their best to make the game as enjoyable and diversely appealing as possible, but they won't always succeed. As the DM of a live, evolving game you can tailor it to the live, evolving desires of the players. It becomes collaborative storytelling where everyone learns and adapts as they go.

Talakeal
2016-01-27, 04:49 PM
The trick to running light fantasy is to not take yourself too seriously. Which is very difficult as a new DM - you're self-conscious about the game, you're worried that the players might not be enjoying themselves, you've over-prepped everything, and you may not be used to roleplaying comic characters or situations.

The swearing player, for instance, might run into a skipper or former navy officer who scoffs at him. "My grand-children can swear better than you, whelp." If the player gets more creative (or viler) with his insults, the officer could look more impressed. "Not bad, not bad. Maybe I judged you too harshly, that was spoken like a true seafarer. My crew and I were looking for X to help with Y, and you might just be the man for the job..."

Suddenly his profanity has turned into a job opportunity, and may be an in-road to establishing a reputation with the sailors or navy.

Alternatively it could trigger a bar brawl, as the boyfriend or husband of the female NPC he slapped in the ass takes it personally. But in the commotion - amid breaking tables and fists flying everywhere - a couple of would-be assassins that were hiding in the inn watching the party get clocked over the head and pass out, allowing them to be captured and interrogated..

Maybe it is actually less to do with the tone of the game and more with the players being of the instigator variety.

One problem is that those examples involve a fairly even power dynamic. Often times it involves something far more serious and lopsided.

For example, a high level PC simply bullying level 1 commoners with their pranks, or a low level PC attempting to insult a powerful king to his face who has every right to simply have the PC executed. Situations like that can really ruin a campaign, both tonally and through following the natural outcome of the events.

Squibsallotl
2016-01-27, 05:28 PM
For example, a high level PC simply bullying level 1 commoners with their pranks, or a low level PC attempting to insult a powerful king to his face who has every right to simply have the PC executed. Situations like that can really ruin a campaign, both tonally and through following the natural outcome of the events.

Maybe the King has them jailed, and then meets them in the dungeons and admits that he needs someone to tell him things as they are, to bring him down a peg, in a court full of toadies. Or he thinks that everyone in his court is plotting to kill him, and he can only trust the party because surely no would-be assassin would insult him to his face.

Or he has a PC "executed", but the character doesn't die. Either a greater power intervenes, or the head re-attaches itself, etc. Something spectacular that reveals a hidden plot point or establishes a new power dynamic.

Both follow a relatively natural, believable progression of events, but have twists which result in progressive outcomes.

Segev
2016-01-27, 05:39 PM
I can nevertheless see why the DM may not wish to encourage such behavior. If, every time a PC does something that would get the party to kill an NPC behaving similarly, the PC comes out smelling like a rose, then the PC is basically being given carte blanche to be a jerk to everybody. Which is also disruptive to the game and to any sense of verisimilitude.