GM hubris and how it leads to bad practices

[Vitruviansquid]

I've been of this stance for awhile, but have only recently thought about it in more concrete terms from seeing this thread http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?530028-Issues-with-the-party-wanting-to-bite-off-more-than-they-can-chew , but I felt this to be sufficiently off-topic as to require its own thread.

So when I say GM hubris, I mean specifically that a GM thinks he is really good at two things: Tactics and Design, and that leads to the following problems.

1. "My players don't play tactically, and they are not smart enough to appreciate the intellectual requirement I have put into my game."

I see this most with GMs who are interested in having players emulate real life military tactics, or GMs who claim to run hardcore and difficult games. The truth is you probably don't know military tactics any better than your players do. Consider two facts that seem to be well-known by armchair tacticians: "long spears in a dense formation will always beat cavalry" and "melting into the wilderness and conducting guerrilla warfare is the best plan to take on an occupying force because guerrilla warfare can't be struck back against."

Consider... it is also possible that it is cavalry that beat long spears in a dense formation because they can outflank them. It is also possible that spearmen or pikemen will break before the cavalry charge hits and then get run over. It is possible that the infantry will do something wrong and expose a gap for the cavalry to come in. You can say that the infantry in those cases made mistakes, but then you would have to acknowledge that you are setting up the cavalry to make the same mistake of making a frontal charge against disciplined infantry.

Consider... even in instances of guerrilla warfare that ended up in victory, guerrillas can take some pretty horrendous attrition. The point of guerrilla warfare is that it is *politically* unviable for the invading force to do what it takes to win, because to do what it takes to win would be a genocide. But what if you were fighting fantasy orcs? Would they have a problem just scouring the land and murdering/eating all your civilians along with your guerrillas?

Besides this, every time I see a thread about a GM who's disappointed in how untactical their players act, it's because their players used a frontal charge at some time. A frontal charge is a great tactic, okay? It's not the end all be all, but it is intimidating, it psyches up your side before the battle is engaged, it is simple and straightforward to execute, and so on. There are many famously powerful militaries that made great use of the frontal charge: Swiss Pikemen, Caroleans, Norman knights, and so on.

2. "My players don't play carefully, and they are not careful enough to find and bypass the devious traps I have set for them."

The truth of the matter is the deviousness of traps are entirely up to you.

In reality, you set up a trap, and it can be removed some number of times by detection.

Let's say you have a corridor with a few hidden wall blades designed to julienne any party of ne'er do-wells who walk through it.

Those hidden wall blades can be triggered by a pressure pad on the ground that the party can detect.

Or, you think you're really clever and you put in a decoy pressure pad where actually, it is a nigh-invisible tripwire put right before the obvious pressure pad.

Or, you think you're really really clever because the pressure pad and the tripwire are actually both decoys and are hidden by illusion while the slots for the blades are also hidden by illusion so that when you think you've got everything... there is actually a wizard somewhere scrying you who pulls a lever that causes the corridor to be flooded with acid.

In the end, you're really giving the players a game that they can only win at your whim.

And sure, some GMs will say "well I wrote what I wrote in the GM notebook, and I'm not going to add or subtract difficulties just to make the players fail or succeed." But is that really helping? Is it so much better for your players to be playing a game they cannot win over a game where a game they can win, only you're going to hide whether they've won or not until they get hit with the consequences?

3. "I created this difficult situation that is actually super fair, but my players failed it and are now complaining that it isn't fair."

Consider this situation:

A gang of thieves has captured the princess, and the players must rescue the princess from the gang of thieves. The players fight through the thieves' hideout until they reach the last room where the thieves' leader is holding the princess with a knife to her throat. So what are the players to do?

They could try to have the archer shoot an arrow that hits the thief in the head before he can react... But now the players have to guess whether the GM thinks that's a smart idea or not. They have to guess ...

- How quickly the GM thinks people's reactions are, and whether the thieves' leader actually has high reactions to slit the princess's throat before the arrow hits?
- How accurate does the GM think bows can get? Or, hell, if your character is wielding a musket, things just got far more complicated.
- Does the GM straight up think this action movie trope is stupid and will never let the players do it?
- Does the GM think your archer character is a supernaturally fast and deadly shot, or is he like "guy at gym" fast and deadly?
- Does the GM think, just because you are playing a game with HP, that an arrow hitting the thieves' leader's head will actually kill him outright, stun him with pain long enough for the princess to get away from him, or not stun him with pain because the rulebook doesn't say it will?

And the thing to point out is, you are in no way smart enough to know what is the best way to rescue the princess in this scenario is because there are undoubtedly factors that exist which you did not consider, factors which you consider but are did not really exist, and your players, ON TOP OF considering every factor they think will be relevant, also has to consider whether or not the GM understands those factors.

[Mr Beer]

Yes, it's easier to solve a problem when you personally designed it.

Tactical combat stuff (problems 1 & 3) might be explicable via the rule set. So the 'correct' tactics can be informed by game mechanics. If you're a GM concerned about tactical realism, you should probably either pick a system you think reflects that or make your house rules open and available to your players.

[Vitruviansquid]

Yes, it's easier to solve a problem when you personally designed it.

Tactical combat stuff (problems 1 & 3) might be explicable via the rule set. So the 'correct' tactics can be informed by game mechanics. If you're a GM concerned about tactical realism, you should probably either pick a system you think reflects that or make your house rules open and available to your players.

Situation 3 also refers to non-combat problems.

[Civis Mundi]

I totally agree with you. First of all, I think humility is really important if you want to grow as a DM. As I like to say, feedback is how DMs gain experience. It's good to remind yourself that your control of a fictional world does not extend to the real world and the real people in it.

Even if the DM is a tactical genius, it's ridiculous to assume that every zombie and every goblin will be the same. If you're trying to portray a realistic world, that means sometimes your bad guys will make bad tactical choices – but bad choices that make the player feel heroic. I try to consider the emotional reactions of my bad guys. If the Barbarian cleaves someone in half, their weak-willed buddy may well make a break for it. He doesn't know it will provoke an attack of opportunity. You can even combine this with a dash of evil. Have a minion on the brink of death run – leaving a more powerful opponent the opportunity to disengage. This is only one example, of course.

Even historically speaking, many so-called axioms of the time were proven wrong time and time again. Often, the difference can be invisible when you paint with broad strokes. You pointed out how cavalry can make a mockery of massed spearmen through flanking maneuvers, and they often did. Alexander the Great was famous for his "hammer and anvil." He broke that axiom all the way through Persia. Speaking of Persia, there's discussion of horse archers going on in another thread – another example of cavalry units trumping spearmen. It gets even more granular. Have the spearmen eaten breakfast? Have they had a chance to sleep? Is there a river to one side of the field? Can the spearmen take the high ground? Who's fighting for wealth or glory, and who's fighting for survival? Which side is more cohesive, better drilled, better led? The list goes on ad nauseam.

Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed. No, sorry, that's not quite right. Let me start over. Furthermore, warfare would be fundamentally different in a each and every D&D world. The more fireballs there are, the fewer phalanxes there will be. Ideally, the DM and the player are working together to create a story – and what a gift for a narrator to have protagonists who are truly alive, with their own agendas, their own goals. Getting surprised is the best part of being a DM, you just need to learn how to handle it. Those are the most exciting parts of any story.

[1337 b4k4]

There's a rule in advertising and presentations that says if you want your audience to remember something, you need to tell it to them 3 times. You need to tell it to them 3 times. You need to tell it to them 3 times. Incidentally, this is why scam company commercials on the radio always repeat their number at the end multiple times.

The same rule I've found applies to GMing in general and traps, tricks and hints specifically. If you want your players to find something, or you want them to think about something or you just want to telegraph something to them, you need to do it 3 times. A trap that has ever fired before should have tell tales. A blade trap maybe has left groves in the floor, a dart trap has odd pock marks on the wall opposite, a falling ceiling might have crushed stone scattered across the floor. But this is only your first telling. You still need 2 more. An obvious one might be spots of dried blood on the floor or walls, or crumbling bits falling from above. Then you still need one more. Maybe the item the trap is guarding looks suspiciously unprotected. Maybe that fake pressure plate is blindingly obvious, like even a 2 year old would notice it.

Now like most GM advice, this is a YMMV thing, and not every trap or trick NEEDS to be that heavily telegraphed, but that's the general rule. In the end though, try and avoid "are you sure" moments. If you find yourself needing to do that often, then you need to tell your players what's around them more. They don't have to know exactly what's going on, but if you were going to ask "are you sure" then you wouldn't have hurt anything by making the clues more obvious anyway, because you wanted them to stop and think (or even not do what they're about to do)

[Satinavian]

Agree with 2, kind of disagree with 1 and 3.


1 ) Yes, there are GMs who are not that good at tactics and don't know it. But on average GMs who actually include tactical challanges and find those interesting and fun are GMs who are somewhat knowledgable about it. Because they find it interesting and fun and engage with it more than average in other contexts.

3 ) That is what mechanics are for. If the system used doesn't have mechanics and the GM has to decide himself, he should explain how he will handle it ruleswise (what kind of tests, what kind of modifiers, what kind of impact in case of success ) before the Players decide to do it or not to do it. Occasionally some of that knowledge might be hidden behind a knowledge roll, but that is rare.

[RazorChain]

3. "I created this difficult situation that is actually super fair, but my players failed it and are now complaining that it isn't fair."

Consider this situation:

A gang of thieves has captured the princess, and the players must rescue the princess from the gang of thieves. The players fight through the thieves' hideout until they reach the last room where the thieves' leader is holding the princess with a knife to her throat. So what are the players to do?

They could try to have the archer shoot an arrow that hits the thief in the head before he can react... But now the players have to guess whether the GM thinks that's a smart idea or not. They have to guess ...

- How quickly the GM thinks people's reactions are, and whether the thieves' leader actually has high reactions to slit the princess's throat before the arrow hits?
- How accurate does the GM think bows can get? Or, hell, if your character is wielding a musket, things just got far more complicated.
- Does the GM straight up think this action movie trope is stupid and will never let the players do it?
- Does the GM think your archer character is a supernaturally fast and deadly shot, or is he like "guy at gym" fast and deadly?
- Does the GM think, just because you are playing a game with HP, that an arrow hitting the thieves' leader's head will actually kill him outright, stun him with pain long enough for the princess to get away from him, or not stun him with pain because the rulebook doesn't say it will?

And the thing to point out is, you are in no way smart enough to know what is the best way to rescue the princess in this scenario is because there are undoubtedly factors that exist which you did not consider, factors which you consider but are did not really exist, and your players, ON TOP OF considering every factor they think will be relevant, also has to consider whether or not the GM understands those factors.

I put my PC's in unfair situation a lot of times. If they end in a situation where somebody has a knife against somebodies throat I'll make a fair assessment if their attempts are successful. If one has his bow trained on the leader it might be successful, they might manage to talk the leader out of the situation or they could have taken another approach to start with. Or they *gasp* fail and the princess dies.

I actually think games the threat of failure is real and failure does not equal TPK are more interesting. Being a fair GM has nothing to do with the situation the PC's put themselves in

Bottom line is life isn't fair.

[Vitruviansquid]

Agree with 2, kind of disagree with 1 and 3.


1 ) Yes, there are GMs who are not that good at tactics and don't know it. But on average GMs who actually include tactical challanges and find those interesting and fun are GMs who are somewhat knowledgable about it. Because they find it interesting and fun and engage with it more than average in other contexts.

3 ) That is what mechanics are for. If the system used doesn't have mechanics and the GM has to decide himself, he should explain how he will handle it ruleswise (what kind of tests, what kind of modifiers, what kind of impact in case of success ) before the Players decide to do it or not to do it. Occasionally some of that knowledge might be hidden behind a knowledge roll, but that is rare.

1) The idea is not that some GMs are bad at tactics. The idea is that ALL GMs are bad at tactics. If we had the ability to time travel to the beginning of a few medieval battles and we could see the forces involved and survey the terrain, we would still have a hard time predicting which side would win without identifying which battle it was. There are simply too many factors to consider and too much "common knowledge" on the subject that is wrong or oversimplified. The idea that you are ever one of the GMs who know for sure is already hubris.

3) Yes, I agree. Telling your players how you might rule an action is a good, humble practice. My problem is when the GMs say to this proposition, "you are metagaming. Tell me what you do and I will tell you the result."

[Zombimode]

1) The idea is not that some GMs are bad at tactics. The idea is that ALL GMs are bad at tactics. If we had the ability to time travel to the beginning of a few medieval battles and we could see the forces involved and survey the terrain, we would still have a hard time predicting which side would win without identifying which battle it was. There are simply too many factors to consider and too much "common knowledge" on the subject that is wrong or oversimplified. The idea that you are ever one of the GMs who know for sure is already hubris.

I think you are confusing specific medieval tactics with general principles (like Information gathering, being flexible and perceptive) and specific game tactics (for 3.5: focusing damage is usually better then spreading, doing nothing for a turn in Exchange for a medium boost to (some) defenses is often not a winning move, etc.).

That today People (and by Extension: GM's) are not proficient in specific medieval tactics I can buy.

That, on the other Hand, GM's can somehow not have a good grasp of general tactical and strategic principles or be good at a specific game is hard to believe.

[Merellis]

Honestly if you're concerned about tactics and scenarios, run it by a couple people first and see what ideas they come up with. Play testing it should yield some results you didn't think of.

[Knaight]

1) The idea is not that some GMs are bad at tactics. The idea is that ALL GMs are bad at tactics. If we had the ability to time travel to the beginning of a few medieval battles and we could see the forces involved and survey the terrain, we would still have a hard time predicting which side would win without identifying which battle it was. There are simply too many factors to consider and too much "common knowledge" on the subject that is wrong or oversimplified. The idea that you are ever one of the GMs who know for sure is already hubris.

This is both true and irrelevant. No historian has as good an understanding of the details of a situation as the people who lived through it; that doesn't mean that the entire field can be dismissed because everyone is bad at it. Yet your argument works just as well for a layperson dismissing a trained historian as it does for a hobbyist with an amateur interest in a subject dismissing a hobbyist with an amateur interest in a subject with a bit more knowledge. You can always point to someone with better knowledge, say that someone falls short of that, then dismiss everything they say - it's not actually a meaningful criticism.

[Vitruviansquid]

I think you are confusing specific medieval tactics with general principles (like Information gathering, being flexible and perceptive) and specific game tactics (for 3.5: focusing damage is usually better then spreading, doing nothing for a turn in Exchange for a medium boost to (some) defenses is often not a winning move, etc.).

That today People (and by Extension: GM's) are not proficient in specific medieval tactics I can buy.

That, on the other Hand, GM's can somehow not have a good grasp of general tactical and strategic principles or be good at a specific game is hard to believe.

GM hubris tends to occur in the grey areas not absolutely covered by the rules (I could probably have been more clear on the abstract point I am trying to make). It is when the GM is absolutely convinced that his ruling on a certain subject is true and his players, if they were as smart as he, would agree. If the players can see all the factors laid out, the GM hubris I am talking about tends not to be damaging. So let's say we are playing D&D and I lay out all the pieces and the battle map and everybody rolls initiative - not hubris.

Hubris occurs very often in the grey areas that are kind of or not at all governed by the rulebook. For example, take the situation described by the OP of the link I posted. A lone goblin demands a toll from the party, and when the party attacks him, it turns out to be a large ambush. The GM believes the party did not do their due diligence scouting the goblin's position. I would say it is pointless to stage an ambush if you were trying to rob people, since you'd want to show your strength in numbers and position and get your money without anyone thinking of fighting back. But then I would have to wonder if there is a lone goblin demanding a toll because he knows something we don't. Or maybe the GM is setting up a situation to tell me that goblins are stupid. Or maybe only this goblin is stupid. So there are really many reasons I could take many actions in this scenario, but the GM with hubris is sitting there thinking his answer is obvious if I acted more tactically about it.

[Vitruviansquid]

This is both true and irrelevant. No historian has as good an understanding of the details of a situation as the people who lived through it; that doesn't mean that the entire field can be dismissed because everyone is bad at it. Yet your argument works just as well for a layperson dismissing a trained historian as it does for a hobbyist with an amateur interest in a subject dismissing a hobbyist with an amateur interest in a subject with a bit more knowledge. You can always point to someone with better knowledge, say that someone falls short of that, then dismiss everything they say - it's not actually a meaningful criticism.

I barely know how to respond to this because what you perceive I am trying to accomplish is so far away from what I have been thinking. But let's give it a crack.

A historian's job is to look at facts and documents and put together theories and explanations.

A GM's job is to create open-ended scenarios and tell players the results of their actions in those scenarios.

This is why I don't see a lot of history-literate people interested in the question, "who would win in a fight, a knight or a samurai?" When pressed, history-literate people tend to catalogue the likely advantages and disadvantages of each, and usually give the disclaimer that "they speculate" which will win under what conditions, and with how much certainty.

Given the same question, however, the GM will have to tell his player a concrete result. Mark the difference.

The idea is not to "point to someone with better knowledge, say that someone falls short of that, then dismiss everything they say." The idea is to show GMs why they should prioritize being flexible and transparent. Better knowledge actually means understanding how much you don't know.

[goto124]

A gang of thieves has captured the princess, and the players must rescue the princess from the gang of thieves. The players fight through the thieves' hideout until they reach the last room where the thieves' leader is holding the princess with a knife to her throat. So what are the players to do?

"She got captured and not killed because her being alive is really essential to the Thieves' Gang in some way. The leader isn't going to actually kill her."

[Darth Ultron]

So when I say GM hubris, I mean specifically that a GM thinks he is really good at two things: Tactics and Design, and that leads to the following problems.

I don't think it works that way. It a lot more the players fault.

It's not that the DM is ''good'' at tactics, has real world military training or is a good DM....it's more about the players not even trying. And it's not about super hard, super complex tactics...it's really about grade school tactic ''your average five year old will understand''. For example: don't get into a fight when outnumbered or don't get into a fight when your outclassed or don't get into a fight from a spot of weakness. If your a group of four characters, and there are 15 orcs guarding something...you don't ''charge in and hope for the best'', that is a bad idea. It's an even worse idea if the 15 orcs are at the door of an evil castle full of 100 more orcs.

It's true that most DM's don't do ''amazing tactics'' (if they did the game would just end, after all), but they at least do ''common sense''. For example: The guards at the guard post have a big bell they can ring if under attack....wow, really, not amazing tactic...and the nearby fort is close enough to hear the bell (all most like the built the guard post right at the perfect bell hearing spot, go figure). So when the character ''Attazz!" the whole fort is alerted in a round. But had the players done even five seconds of effort, they could have distracted the guards/got them out of the post...away from the bell...AND THEN attacked them.

In most games...the most basic, like bad b-movie or TV tactics are all the DM wants...but the players refuse to do even that.

Playing carefully is a big problem. Though this starts at the beginning. A ''Buddy DM'' that says they won't kill the characters, point buys, max hit points, the cry that traps are unfair and unfun, and the crazy ''player agency'' idea all form a very bad set up for this: the players feel so high and special, why should they be careful? They have the greatest characters ever made and are using all sorts of house rules to change the game to make the characters even more super and all powerful. So: why be careful? The players KNOW the DM won't kill off their character and know the DM bent over backwards to give their character all sorts of special things (like max HP). So, sure, the players play the game just like they would a video game on ''infinite lives/god mode''.

And that, above is a problem with at least half of the games played.

Design is a bit more tricky. And ''fair'' is subjective. And you could go around in circles here. But still, if the players could have their characters act even like ''b-movie or TV heroes'' it would be a huge boost over the ''act like crazy fools''.

A lot of this is just knowing the rules. A single arrow is unlikely to slay any foe that is not badly wounded or have like 1/2 a HD. So a player that thinks ''my arrow will auto killz him'' is just crazy stupid. Of course, the character could have an arrow of bandit thief slaying...

And in your average hostage situation maybe ''shootz'in an Arrowz! Pew Pew!'' is not the best way to go and the players might do...well...anything else. For example: A great tactic here is something like the spell sleep or hold person. Or a poison that can paralyze.

Or, if you watched the movie Speed: Take out the hostage by shooting them in the leg.

[malachi]

Design is a bit more tricky. And ''fair'' is subjective. And you could go around in circles here. But still, if the players could have their characters act even like ''b-movie or TV heroes'' it would be a huge boost over the ''act like crazy fools''.

A lot of this is just knowing the rules. A single arrow is unlikely to slay any foe that is not badly wounded or have like 1/2 a HD. So a player that thinks ''my arrow will auto killz him'' is just crazy stupid. Of course, the character could have an arrow of bandit thief slaying...

And in your average hostage situation maybe ''shootz'in an Arrowz! Pew Pew!'' is not the best way to go and the players might do...well...anything else. For example: A great tactic here is something like the spell sleep or hold person. Or a poison that can paralyze.

Or, if you watched the movie Speed: Take out the hostage by shooting them in the leg.

But isn't it normal for "b-movie or TV heroes" to shoot the hostage-holder in the head in a situation like that to resolve the situation? You just set up a contradictory argument where (A) you want the players to use at least the level of tactics used by 'b-movie / TV heroes' and (B) you're saying that tactics used by 'b-movie / TV heroes' are just crazy stupid by the rules. You also say (C) they should just follow movie logic and shoot the person in the leg, which by the rules of most games wouldn't actually do anything. That's the exact problem the OP is talking about. How are the players supposed to know what the DM will consider a 'smart' course of action? They're not mind readers.

[Pugwampy]

And what about the otherside of the coin ?

Must DM bend over backward and give players a diseased dog to kill because the Ranger and Cleric have left for home early . There are lots of other rpg options less dangerous to try out than a hole full of barbarians . Why not hunt bunnies ? Or dig a ditch ?

What if DM tells em over and over that Bard and Sorcerer should not be playing in the frontline ? Is it his fault if they charge attack ?

What if Dm tells them his playstyle and which class works best and which sucks yet they insist on playing sucky classes and then complain that DM is too tough on them.

Whats a poor DM to do when Druid wants to play with his shiny bow and arrows instead of that cool flaming sphere spell ?
I suppose i should be grateful that not one spell chucker at lvl 7 ever shot off a fireball or lightning bolt at my fuzzy munchkins .

My favorite one of course is players eating up their trail rations in a tavern .The food was paid for already....

Its a free country , they always have escape routes and temple raise dead fees are reasonable . If i am lucky they will play more serious next time ?

These are not 12 yr old kiddies I talk of , these were players in their late twenties.

[PhoenixPhyre]

And what about the otherside of the coin ?

Must DM bend over backward and give players a diseased dog to kill because the Ranger and Cleric have left for home early . There are lots of other rpg options less dangerous to try out than a hole full of barbarians . Why not hunt bunnies ? Or dig a ditch ?

What if DM tells em over and over that Bard and Sorcerer should not be playing in the frontline ? Is it his fault if they charge attack ?

What if Dm tells them his playstyle and which class works best and which sucks yet they insist on playing sucky classes and then complain that DM is too tough on them.

Whats a poor DM to do when Druid wants to play with his shiny bow and arrows instead of that cool flaming sphere spell ?
I suppose i should be grateful that not one spell chucker at lvl 7 ever shot off a fireball or lightning bolt at my fuzzy munchkins .

My favorite one of course is players eating up their trail rations in a tavern .The food was paid for already....

Its a free country , they always have escape routes and temple raise dead fees are reasonable . If i am lucky they will play more serious next time ?

These are not 12 yr old kiddies I talk of , these were players in their late twenties.

To me that speaks of an expectations disconnect, coupled with lack of system mastery on the part of the players. Those are solvable without having to TPK them for "not playing right." I know, I play with new players (and teenagers at that) most of the time.

To the more general topic:
As a player, I've been frustrated at times when DMs assume that things are obvious ("of course that thing was too tough for them!" or "Of course there were other options") when they didn't make it clear that those were even options. The perception of railroading is often stronger than the actual intent to railroad. People in general are bad at conveying fundamental assumptions--we assume they're understood when they're not. DMs, please use your words more. Be blunt and explicit. Don't think "oh, well, they'll get it from my tone" or require them to have understood all the intervening pieces. Those pieces are clear to you because you already know the whole picture. The players only have heard the compressed form of parts of them at best, filtered through language comprehension, which is extremely lossy.

As a DM, I find I have to make things over-obvious, usually repeating myself in 3 or 4 different ways. That or straight-out saying things like "why are you eating your trail rations?" to make them think. Also, giving scenarios that have pre-determined "best solutions" is a good way to get frustration. Same with an "those classes are sucky" attitude. Adapt your scenarios to the players--the goal is having fun, after all.

[Pex]

While I can agree there exists players who Honest True do stupid things, I find it is often DM hubris when they say their players are stupid. What is obvious to the DM is only obvious because he created the adventure. It is not obvious to the players. They can only go on what the DM tells them and even then not "get it" because of different interpretation of what exists. Players can make a wrong choice, but just because they do doesn't make them stupid for doing it. A DM who calls his players stupid is a DM who hates his players and is full of himself. The DM runs the campaign, but he's not a superior being.

[CharonsHelper]

Other GMs have hubris.

I just have being awesome!

[PhoenixPhyre]

While I can agree there exists players who Honest True do stupid things, I find it is often DM hubris when they say their players are stupid. What is obvious to the DM is only obvious because he created the adventure. It is not obvious to the players. They can only go on what the DM tells them and even then not "get it" because of different interpretation of what exists. Players can make a wrong choice, but just because they do doesn't make them stupid for doing it. A DM who calls his players stupid is a DM who hates his players and is full of himself. The DM runs the campaign, but he's not a superior being.

I agree, but have had a player do an awful stupid thing. This kid missed/ignored when I said that the world wasn't leveled for their convenience and that there were things they should run from. He decided to a) awaken a sleeping dire yeti (at level 2), b) continue yelling at it as it slowly rose and licked its chops hungrily, and c) attack it. His character died, messily, and he learned.

Other than that, most of the time it's been me not making things clear and when they're about to do something so stupid their characters would certainly know better, I stop and ask if it's intentional, laying out the consequences that would be apparent to any character that survived 10 years.

[goto124]

Seems that the main issue would be trying to hammer in the idea that unlike video games and novels, just because an interesting thing is in front of you does not mean you're supposed to face it head-on. It flies in the face of the aforementioned media, and would be a hard habit to break.

[CharonsHelper]

Seems that the main issue would be trying to hammer in the idea that unlike video games and novels, just because an interesting is in front of you does not mean you're supposed to face it head-on. It flies in the face of the aforementioned media, and would be a hard habit to break.

In MMORPGs that's often not the case, but they're basically wearing signs saying not to fight them. (name in red text etc.)

Though frankly - with a new player I'd probably do that. I'd tell them OOC that the XX is much more powerful than they are.

[PhoenixPhyre]

In MMORPGs that's often not the case, but they're basically wearing signs saying not to fight them. (name in red text etc.)

Though frankly - with a new player I'd probably do that. I'd tell them OOC that the XX is much more powerful than they are.

I probably wouldn't limit it to new players. If the knowledge is something any adult would know (or they wouldn't have survived that long), they get told it straight up. Intelligence (History) check to know who the ruler of the town you grew up in is? Why? Same goes for obvious large differences in strength. Either if you fight, you will almost certainly die or they don't stand a chance against you.

On that note, I find the abhorrence some DMs have toward speaking OOC to be puzzling. There's lots of stuff the character (being there in the situation) would know that can't be easily boiled down to describable observations. Just go ahead and tell them. Playing gotcha games or read-the-DM's-mind irritates me.

[CharonsHelper]

I probably wouldn't limit it to new players. If the knowledge is something any adult would know (or they wouldn't have survived that long), they get told it straight up. Intelligence (History) check to know who the ruler of the town you grew up in is? Why? Same goes for obvious large differences in strength. Either if you fight, you will almost certainly die or they don't stand a chance against you.

Oh - definitely. If (in D&D terms) the characters have knowledge skills I'm a big fan of giving them checks, and really basic stuff I'll give a DC of 5ish. They'll get info about them along with a general ballpark of how tough they are relative to the PC.

For the new player though I'll beat them over the head with "you WILL DIE".

[PhoenixPhyre]

Oh - definitely. If (in D&D terms) the characters have knowledge skills I'm a big fan of giving them checks, and really basic stuff I'll give a DC of 5ish. They'll get info about them along with a general ballpark of how tough they are relative to the PC.

For the new player though I'll beat them over the head with "you WILL DIE".

I play 5e, and the guidance is basically "DC 5 = auto-success except in strange circumstances." Basic stuff, you just know. Most stuff, how well you do determines how much extra you remember rather than do you remember at all (degrees of success, instead of failure). Abtruse or exoteric stuff? Gotta find out from someone who knows it unless you've established in-game that you know that stuff (DC=nope).

But yeah, tell players things. Don't make them guess. It's not meta-gaming, it's telling what the characters would certainly know. If trolls are common, then anyone except the most sheltered would know that you need fire or acid. There are two moons. Don't talk to dragons with tentacles coming out of their backs, especially at the home of the BBEG...wait, I'm getting confused with things my players have actually tried.

[Eurus]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, it seems to me like if you're trying to say that a problem with your game is is "the players' fault" or "the DM's fault", your group is messed up on a fundamental level that won't be corrected by anything except better communication of what everyone's expectations are.

DMs and players are not different species. They're just people playing a game, and people tend to have this problem where they assume that what's true for them is true for everyone. People assume that everyone else is in this game for the same reasons they are, and they assume that the things which are obvious to them are obvious to others. These two flaws seem to pretty much encapsulate your three big issues, and they're something that every person playing games (or, for that matter, engaging in any kind of social activity) needs to learn to account for.

The "tactical" problem comes up a lot, and it's the perfect example of "I assume that the rest of my group wants the same things out of this game that I do". The hypothetical GM in this case is interested in sandboxy problem-solving as applied to combat situations, and the players either aren't interested in that or, possibly, they would be interested but they don't understand what the GM is going for because the GM never actually told them. You can see other examples of this in the example of the player who builds a much stronger PC than the rest of the group and obviates every fight, or the player who builds a character with a rigid code of ethics and then comes into violent confrontation with the rest of the party over it, to everyone's consternation. The problem isn't that one person is doing something wrong, the problem is that they aren't communicating their desires with the rest of the group, so you have different people playing entirely different games and nobody is actually having fun.

Your second and third examples are the "it seems intuitive to me, so it must be obvious, therefore if the rest of the group doesn't see it they're just not paying attention", which is a communication issue common to both players and GMs again. It's a tricky one because it sneaks up on you every time, and the only real way to handle it is with a constant flow of OOC communication to make sure everyone's on the right page. You say "They have to guess...", but that's not true. They have to ask, because the guy in the GM seat is only human and he can't read your mind any more than you can read his so he doesn't know what your assumptions are either.

Basically, what I'm saying is that "hubris" seems like a grandiose and kind of confrontational term for what is, in the end, just a mistake, and an extremely common one at that. Most people are naturally bad at communicating, it's a skill you have to learn. And this kind of hobby is 99% communication.

[Darth Ultron]

But isn't it normal for "b-movie or TV heroes" to shoot the hostage-holder in the head in a situation like that to resolve the situation? You just set up a contradictory argument where (A) you want the players to use at least the level of tactics used by 'b-movie / TV heroes' and (B) you're saying that tactics used by 'b-movie / TV heroes' are just crazy stupid by the rules. You also say (C) they should just follow movie logic and shoot the person in the leg, which by the rules of most games wouldn't actually do anything. That's the exact problem the OP is talking about. How are the players supposed to know what the DM will consider a 'smart' course of action? They're not mind readers.

Well, not exactly.

Yes, you want the players to use at least b-movie/tv tactics...but they must also remember the rules of the game. Yes, a b-movie/TV anti-hero might well ''shoot the guy in the head'', as in a movie/TV show that does kill a bad guy character.

However, in a game like D&D ''one shoot by an arrow'' is unlikely to automatically kill any NPC foe. So, you can't exactly do the ''movie tv show'' move, as it won't work in the game....unless, like I said, you use a spell or an arrow of slaying or some other such thing that will kill the npc, but not ''just do a little damage''.

A good DM knows their players, enough to make and run a good, fun game. Good players, in turn, must also know their DM. If a player knows the DM, they will know what to expect and what to do. It's not exactly mind reading, but it is knowing people.

[RazorChain]

Well, not exactly.

Yes, you want the players to use at least b-movie/tv tactics...but they must also remember the rules of the game. Yes, a b-movie/TV anti-hero might well ''shoot the guy in the head'', as in a movie/TV show that does kill a bad guy character.

However, in a game like D&D ''one shoot by an arrow'' is unlikely to automatically kill any NPC foe. So, you can't exactly do the ''movie tv show'' move, as it won't work in the game....unless, like I said, you use a spell or an arrow of slaying or some other such thing that will kill the npc, but not ''just do a little damage''.

A good DM knows their players, enough to make and run a good, fun game. Good players, in turn, must also know their DM. If a player knows the DM, they will know what to expect and what to do. It's not exactly mind reading, but it is knowing people.

I think this is because the game is disconnected from realistic expectations. In real life if you shoot somebody in the face with a bow, gun or whatever it's going to hurt or kill him. I've found it much easier to run games for new players that cater to realistic expectations, that way they can easily assess an situation and react to it. The farther the game moves from realistic expectations the harder it will for players to assess situations unless they know the rules explicitly. This will often result in a lot of metagaming where the party and the GM will play up to tactics like focus fire on one target to drop it and use tactics that are very disconnected from the real world. So the players will change their tactics because they know they have become more powerful and their opposition has escalated. In class based system players will try to determine the classes of their opposition "Ah...it's a rogue" and change their tactics accordingly "watch out he doesn't backstab you"

At least when I was in the military we didn't all try to shoot the same guy because he probably had lots of Hit Points and when I was training for anti terror/hostage situation shooting somebody in the face was a perfectly viable tactic.

You can't assess what level people are or how many HP they have but the GM always knows. The GM can always win, he knows the opposition and the PC's, what tactics they are inclined to use, what resources they have etc.

But I agree that knowing your players and knowing your GM helps alot. After playing with my new group I know what they like and how they are apt to react to situations and that makes for a better game.

[goto124]

This will often result in a lot of metagaming where the party and the GM will play up to tactics like focus fire on one target to drop it and use tactics that are very disconnected from the real world. So the players will change their tactics because they know they have become more powerful and their opposition has escalated. In class based system players will try to determine the classes of their opposition "Ah...it's a rogue" and change their tactics accordingly "watch out he doesn't backstab you"

At least when I was in the military we didn't all try to shoot the same guy because he probably had lots of Hit Points

As someone who has zero experience with RL combat, my first and only reaction to combat in a tabletop game would be the video-gamey tactics. Simply because I don't know anything else. If a GM told me to stop using video-game tactics, I'll have to be trained a new set of tactics from ground zero. That, or I could consider the GM's game to be not my style, and peacefully leave.

[RazorChain]

As someone who has zero experience with RL combat, my first and only reaction to combat in a tabletop game would be the video-gamey tactics. Simply because I don't know anything else. If a GM told me to stop using video-game tactics, I'll have to be trained a new set of tactics from ground zero. That, or I could consider the GM's game to be not my style, and peacefully leave.

Video game tactics are based on the game you are playing. If you are a CS:GO player or MMORPG player then your tactics will vary wildly

The CS:GO player will tell you that headshots are best while the MMORPG player will say that headshots are impossible.

But they can both agree on that in the real world headshots are actually possible and can harm and likely kill.

[War_lord]

I've been of this stance for awhile, but have only recently thought about it in more concrete terms from seeing this thread http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?530028-Issues-with-the-party-wanting-to-bite-off-more-than-they-can-chew , but I felt this to be sufficiently off-topic as to require its own thread.

So when I say GM hubris, I mean specifically that a GM thinks he is really good at two things: Tactics and Design, and that leads to the following problems.

That's only "hubris" if the DM's assessment of their own capabilities is incorrect.


1. "My players don't play tactically, and they are not smart enough to appreciate the intellectual requirement I have put into my game."

I see this most with GMs who are interested in having players emulate real life military tactics, or GMs who claim to run hardcore and difficult games. The truth is you probably don't know military tactics any better than your players do.

That depends entirely on the group. If the DM is an actual Officer Candidate School grad, and the players have no interest in history or military theory, they probably know more about the subject then the players do. If the group all met through their shared love of military history, but none of them are formally educated in that field, they probably have about an equal base of knowledge. I have an amateur interest in military matters, but I'm fully cognizant of the fact that I don't know a fraction of what a professional knows about the subject. Part of pursuing knowledge is accepting that you need to learn from others who have more knowledge in the subject from you.


Consider two facts that seem to be well-known by armchair tacticians: "long spears in a dense formation will always beat cavalry" and "melting into the wilderness and conducting guerrilla warfare is the best plan to take on an occupying force because guerrilla warfare can't be struck back against."

Consider... it is also possible that it is cavalry that beat long spears in a dense formation because they can outflank them. It is also possible that spearmen or pikemen will break before the cavalry charge hits and then get run over. It is possible that the infantry will do something wrong and expose a gap for the cavalry to come in. You can say that the infantry in those cases made mistakes, but then you would have to acknowledge that you are setting up the cavalry to make the same mistake of making a frontal charge against disciplined infantry.

Consider... even in instances of guerrilla warfare that ended up in victory, guerrillas can take some pretty horrendous attrition. The point of guerrilla warfare is that it is *politically* unviable for the invading force to do what it takes to win, because to do what it takes to win would be a genocide. But what if you were fighting fantasy orcs? Would they have a problem just scouring the land and murdering/eating all your civilians along with your guerrillas?

Well to "consider" your points. You have the first fact wrong, the rule is that a dense formation of infantry will defeat a cavalry charge. Why? Because a warhorse will not charge a hedgerow of steel, be it spears, pikes or bayonets, because a horse is an intelligent animal and will not do something obviously suicidal. Now, as for the infantry doing " something wrong and expose a gap for the cavalry to come in", yes, that did happen, when the infantry was poorly trained, and the era of the Knightly charge coincided with the era of poorly trained, poorly equipped and poorly disciplined levy infantry forces. When the Knightly charge did clash with trained and disciplined infantry, they got slaughtered, see for example Golden Spurs, or Crécy. Once it became clear to the leaders of the time that correctly deployed infantry could resist a charge, the cavalry returned to their traditional role as a flanking element. But, like with all military innovation, there was a painful teething period where knights did make charges that were objectively suicidal.

On the second point, guerrilla warfare doesn't work against Orcs because, in D&D at least, Orcs are raiders. They don't want land, they want your valuables. withdrawing to fight in the wilderness is pointless, because they aren't conquerors, they'll sack your castle then leave. The point of guerrilla warfare is to make further occupation too costly, so that the enemy is either defeated, or forced to withdraw due to other factors. Those other factors could be political (internal unrest) or military (the occupation troops are needed to combat a threat elsewhere). Repression is not a perfect counter to resistance, if the resistance is determined, repression could backfire, giving a previously fringe movement popular sympathy and eventually support. Hobgoblins are capable of great repression, but they're vulnerable to a guerilla or, better yet, Fabian, strategy.


Besides this, every time I see a thread about a GM who's disappointed in how untactical their players act, it's because their players used a frontal charge at some time. A frontal charge is a great tactic, okay? It's not the end all be all, but it is intimidating, it psyches up your side before the battle is engaged, it is simple and straightforward to execute, and so on. There are many famously powerful militaries that made great use of the frontal charge: Swiss Pikemen, Caroleans, Norman knights, and so on.

You're confusing military tactics involving formations of hundreds or even thousands of men, to tactics in Roleplaying games. I can say however, that in both cases a frontal charge is not a great tactic. It can be effective in certain circumstances, but it carries with it a great deal of risk, because if your big charge fails to break the enemy, or the enemy has prepared for a direct attack you're going to be in trouble. The European Knight was defeated by the rise of the Pike formation and the Swiss Pike formation was defeated by other armies integrating the Musket and the Cannon into their Pike formation. Frontal charges can be countered, and a unconsidered frontal charge isn't a tactic.

If your merry band of four level 5 adventurers are faced by seven Orcs and a Blade of Ilneval, and their only plan is "YOLO charge". I'm sorry, that's not a tactic, that's just being dumb.


2. "My players don't play carefully, and they are not careful enough to find and bypass the devious traps I have set for them."

The truth of the matter is the deviousness of traps are entirely up to you.

In reality, you set up a trap, and it can be removed some number of times by detection.

Let's say you have a corridor with a few hidden wall blades designed to julienne any party of ne'er do-wells who walk through it.

Those hidden wall blades can be triggered by a pressure pad on the ground that the party can detect.

Or, you think you're really clever and you put in a decoy pressure pad where actually, it is a nigh-invisible tripwire put right before the obvious pressure pad.

Or, you think you're really really clever because the pressure pad and the tripwire are actually both decoys and are hidden by illusion while the slots for the blades are also hidden by illusion so that when you think you've got everything... there is actually a wizard somewhere scrying you who pulls a lever that causes the corridor to be flooded with acid.

In the end, you're really giving the players a game that they can only win at your whim.

Here's the shocking secret to the Tabletop RPG, ready? The game can always, always, only be won because the DM lets it happen. What a good DM does is walk that line between too easy and too hard, so that the players feel challenged, but not besieged or cheated like in your example of how you seem to think DM's make traps. That's a tough thing to do. It's not made any easier by so many players nowadays getting their idea of fairness from modern CRPG's like "Skyrim" that make death almost impossible in favor of cheap gratification for "beating" Dragons by the dozen.


3. "I created this difficult situation that is actually super fair, but my players failed it and are now complaining that it isn't fair."

Consider this situation:

A gang of thieves has captured the princess, and the players must rescue the princess from the gang of thieves. The players fight through the thieves' hideout until they reach the last room where the thieves' leader is holding the princess with a knife to her throat. So what are the players to do?

They could try to have the archer shoot an arrow that hits the thief in the head before he can react... But now the players have to guess whether the GM thinks that's a smart idea or not. They have to guess ...

- How quickly the GM thinks people's reactions are, and whether the thieves' leader actually has high reactions to slit the princess's throat before the arrow hits?
- How accurate does the GM think bows can get? Or, hell, if your character is wielding a musket, things just got far more complicated.
- Does the GM straight up think this action movie trope is stupid and will never let the players do it?
- Does the GM think your archer character is a supernaturally fast and deadly shot, or is he like "guy at gym" fast and deadly?
- Does the GM think, just because you are playing a game with HP, that an arrow hitting the thieves' leader's head will actually kill him outright, stun him with pain long enough for the princess to get away from him, or not stun him with pain because the rulebook doesn't say it will?

Reactions are governed by initiative. Everything else is stuff you should have asked the DM back before the game even started. That's what "session zero" is for. So that everyone knows what kind of game they're playing and what the expectations are.


And the thing to point out is, you are in no way smart enough to know what is the best way to rescue the princess in this scenario is because there are undoubtedly factors that exist which you did not consider, factors which you consider but are did not really exist, and your players, ON TOP OF considering every factor they think will be relevant, also has to consider whether or not the GM understands those factors.

The DM's job is to be both storyteller and referee bud, basic principal of the game. If the inherently subjective nature of that bugs you so much, I'm afraid you're never going to enjoy these games.

[Vitruviansquid]

And what about the otherside of the coin ?

Must DM bend over backward and give players a diseased dog to kill because the Ranger and Cleric have left for home early . There are lots of other rpg options less dangerous to try out than a hole full of barbarians . Why not hunt bunnies ? Or dig a ditch ?

What if DM tells em over and over that Bard and Sorcerer should not be playing in the frontline ? Is it his fault if they charge attack ?

What if Dm tells them his playstyle and which class works best and which sucks yet they insist on playing sucky classes and then complain that DM is too tough on them.

Whats a poor DM to do when Druid wants to play with his shiny bow and arrows instead of that cool flaming sphere spell ?
I suppose i should be grateful that not one spell chucker at lvl 7 ever shot off a fireball or lightning bolt at my fuzzy munchkins .

My favorite one of course is players eating up their trail rations in a tavern .The food was paid for already....

Its a free country , they always have escape routes and temple raise dead fees are reasonable . If i am lucky they will play more serious next time ?

These are not 12 yr old kiddies I talk of , these were players in their late twenties.

If the players want to do something dumb, give them the consequence for doing something dumb. That's fine.

I am talking about GM hubris because GMs often fail to realize that they don't really know what's dumb and not dumb in grey situations.

If you've rolled initiative and all the minis are on the mat and no exceptions or fiats need to be made on the game's rules, then this tends not to be an area where GM hubris comes in.

So in your cases, yes, most of the players should be laid out by the natural, foreseeable consequences of the rules.

[Vitruviansquid]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, it seems to me like if you're trying to say that a problem with your game is is "the players' fault" or "the DM's fault", your group is messed up on a fundamental level that won't be corrected by anything except better communication of what everyone's expectations are.

DMs and players are not different species. They're just people playing a game, and people tend to have this problem where they assume that what's true for them is true for everyone. People assume that everyone else is in this game for the same reasons they are, and they assume that the things which are obvious to them are obvious to others. These two flaws seem to pretty much encapsulate your three big issues, and they're something that every person playing games (or, for that matter, engaging in any kind of social activity) needs to learn to account for.

The "tactical" problem comes up a lot, and it's the perfect example of "I assume that the rest of my group wants the same things out of this game that I do". The hypothetical GM in this case is interested in sandboxy problem-solving as applied to combat situations, and the players either aren't interested in that or, possibly, they would be interested but they don't understand what the GM is going for because the GM never actually told them. You can see other examples of this in the example of the player who builds a much stronger PC than the rest of the group and obviates every fight, or the player who builds a character with a rigid code of ethics and then comes into violent confrontation with the rest of the party over it, to everyone's consternation. The problem isn't that one person is doing something wrong, the problem is that they aren't communicating their desires with the rest of the group, so you have different people playing entirely different games and nobody is actually having fun.

Your second and third examples are the "it seems intuitive to me, so it must be obvious, therefore if the rest of the group doesn't see it they're just not paying attention", which is a communication issue common to both players and GMs again. It's a tricky one because it sneaks up on you every time, and the only real way to handle it is with a constant flow of OOC communication to make sure everyone's on the right page. You say "They have to guess...", but that's not true. They have to ask, because the guy in the GM seat is only human and he can't read your mind any more than you can read his so he doesn't know what your assumptions are either.

Basically, what I'm saying is that "hubris" seems like a grandiose and kind of confrontational term for what is, in the end, just a mistake, and an extremely common one at that. Most people are naturally bad at communicating, it's a skill you have to learn. And this kind of hobby is 99% communication.

I am going to reply to that last paragraph as my reply to the whole post.

"Hubris" is exactly the right word to use because it denotes when mortal men attempt to usurp the excellence of gods.

A GM is a lot like a god of the campaign in that, like Zeus, whatever he says goes. A GM who runs his world like he knows everything is engaging in hubris - he thinks he can run a game world as Zeus runs the real world. A GM who does not engage in hubris is the one who implements your solution to the problems I bring up as examples 2 and 3. A GM without hubris communicates with players and lets expectations be known.

The "tactical problem" is not the GM running one type of game and the players wanting another. If I had to re-word it, it is that the Gm believes one result is inevitable when actually it is merely possible, if that.

[Vitruviansquid]

Well, not exactly.

Yes, you want the players to use at least b-movie/tv tactics...but they must also remember the rules of the game. Yes, a b-movie/TV anti-hero might well ''shoot the guy in the head'', as in a movie/TV show that does kill a bad guy character.

However, in a game like D&D ''one shoot by an arrow'' is unlikely to automatically kill any NPC foe. So, you can't exactly do the ''movie tv show'' move, as it won't work in the game....unless, like I said, you use a spell or an arrow of slaying or some other such thing that will kill the npc, but not ''just do a little damage''.

A good DM knows their players, enough to make and run a good, fun game. Good players, in turn, must also know their DM. If a player knows the DM, they will know what to expect and what to do. It's not exactly mind reading, but it is knowing people.

But we have to also be careful to dilineate when DM fiat applies and when we are following the rulebook. Let's not forget the Chunky Salsa Rule exists specifically because groups don't like situations where game rules break realistic expectations.

[Mr Beer]

"Hubris" is exactly the right word to use because it denotes when mortal men attempt to usurp the excellence of gods.

A GM is a lot like a god of the campaign in that, like Zeus, whatever he says goes. A GM who runs his world like he knows everything is engaging in hubris - he thinks he can run a game world as Zeus runs the real world. A GM who does not engage in hubris is the one who implements your solution to the problems I bring up as examples 2 and 3. A GM without hubris communicates with players and lets expectations be known.

Wait, Zeus runs the real world? I always said this forum is a learning experience but this might be a record.

[Vitruviansquid]

Wait, Zeus runs the real world? I always said this forum is a learning experience but this might be a record.

Please tell me you are just yanking my chain and I don't have to clarify this for you.

[Satinavian]

1) The idea is not that some GMs are bad at tactics. The idea is that ALL GMs are bad at tactics. If we had the ability to time travel to the beginning of a few medieval battles and we could see the forces involved and survey the terrain, we would still have a hard time predicting which side would win without identifying which battle it was. There are simply too many factors to consider and too much "common knowledge" on the subject that is wrong or oversimplified. The idea that you are ever one of the GMs who know for sure is already hubris.
Still disagree.

Sure, most battles don't have that obvious considering that otherwise one side would have tried to avoid it. But that is not always the case. There are many many battles that were utterly one-sided and happened because the relevant commanders lacked critical information. With this critical information we usually would be able to guess correctly at the outcome.

The next thing is that battles are so hard to predict because a lot of things happen in battles, influencing each other. That is why GM judgement about tactics is rarely about battles (excluding those happening somewhere else in the background), it is about engagements. And those are a whole lot easier to judge.

Then there is the little thing that from GM arbitration there are not only the answers "side A wins clearly" and "side b wins clearly", the results of GM judgement can easily be "could go either way" or "it is unlikely this engangement will prove decisive. They will disengage with losses on both sides". Just because reality is no single rock-paper-scissors-game with obvious clear winners, GM judgements are not wrong or bad or unrealistic.
That is also why your distinction between GMs and history professionals falls flat. They can both say "i am not sure" or "this and that is an advantage and thus i think this outcome is more likely". -> If that is translated into DM decisions in the game, it will always be "and this happens" because there will be only one outcome in the game. And it is really far from uncommon for GMs to toss in some roll if something is uncertain to account for that.

[Darth Ultron]

But we have to also be careful to dilineate when DM fiat applies and when we are following the rulebook. Let's not forget the Chunky Salsa Rule exists specifically because groups don't like situations where game rules break realistic expectations.

This largely comes under ''know your DM''.




The "tactical problem" is not the GM running one type of game and the players wanting another. If I had to re-word it, it is that the Gm believes one result is inevitable when actually it is merely possible, if that.

I guess a bad DM might think this, or one that was inexperienced or just a jerk. But no ''even just average'' DM would think anything is ''inevitable''. Unless they are a powerful tyrant DM that will bend time and space and reality in the game to make it possible....and very few DM's will admit to being like that. After all making thins in the game ''inevitable'', is ''railroading'', and very few DM's want to admit to doing that as they will loose their ''cool status'' among the Railway Haters Presser Group.

It's a bit more normal for a DM, knowing all the rules and facts of an encounter will know the most likely possibilities.

[Quertus]

So, how many different, conflicting, definitive answers to the effectiveness of pikes do we have so far? Even If one of those is correct, it means that every other one is wrong, or at least incomplete. I'm not liking the odds.

If I'm sitting down to play D&D*, I want to play by the rules of D&D, not "random idiot #4276's opinion of how weapons work, the game". Now, if they've actually bothered to write down all their (probably wrong) "realistic " rules, I'll read through their "historically accurate, totally realistic" rules, and then calmly and politely ask them just WTF they were thinking - what did they think it could possibly add to the enjoyment of the game to add in all this overhead? EDIT: and where did they find a historically accurate dragon to model weapon effectiveness against?

GMs who don't even bother publishing all their assumptions aren't even worth that.

* you can substitute in other published games, if you like


On that note, I find the abhorrence some DMs have toward speaking OOC to be puzzling. There's lots of stuff the character (being there in the situation) would know that can't be easily boiled down to describable observations. Just go ahead and tell them. Playing gotcha games or read-the-DM's-mind irritates me.

Well, "pile of stats and figures" is much less cool than "fire bragging dragon" or "fiend from the abyss". So I can see not wanting the players to just reduce the encounter to a pile of stats and math.

But, beyond that, unless your players' immersion is too easily broken, I can't see the point.


But isn't it normal for "b-movie or TV heroes" to shoot the hostage-holder in the head in a situation like that to resolve the situation? You just set up a contradictory argument where (A) you want the players to use at least the level of tactics used by 'b-movie / TV heroes' and (B) you're saying that tactics used by 'b-movie / TV heroes' are just crazy stupid by the rules. You also say (C) they should just follow movie logic and shoot the person in the leg, which by the rules of most games wouldn't actually do anything. That's the exact problem the OP is talking about. How are the players supposed to know what the DM will consider a 'smart' course of action? They're not mind readers.

You mean you found a way to get into the "Player" prestige class without meeting the "Mind Reader" prerequisite?


You're confusing military tactics involving formations of hundreds or even thousands of men, to tactics in Roleplaying games. I can say however, that in both cases a frontal charge is not a great tactic. It can be effective in certain circumstances, but it carries with it a great deal of risk, because if your big charge fails to break the enemy, or the enemy has prepared for a direct attack you're going to be in trouble. The European Knight was defeated by the rise of the Pike formation and the Swiss Pike formation was defeated by other armies integrating the Musket and the Cannon into their Pike formation. Frontal charges can be countered, and a unconsidered frontal charge isn't a tactic.

If your merry band of four level 5 adventurers are faced by seven Orcs and a Blade of Ilneval, and their only plan is "YOLO charge". I'm sorry, that's not a tactic, that's just being dumb.

Your confusing real world tactics and game tactics. When you have pounce, great cleave, and the ability to take free 5" steps between cleave attacks, the frontal charge is pretty bloody effective, especially compared to anything else said character could do.

If I wanted real world rules, I'd care more about killing people irl.


Here's the shocking secret to the Tabletop RPG, ready? The game can always, always, only be won because the DM lets it happen. What a good DM does is walk that line between too easy and too hard, so that the players feel challenged, but not besieged or cheated like in your example of how you seem to think DM's make traps. That's a tough thing to do. It's not made any easier by so many players nowadays getting their idea of fairness from modern CRPG's like "Skyrim" that make death almost impossible in favor of cheap gratification for "beating" Dragons by the dozen.

Reactions are governed by initiative. Everything else is stuff you should have asked the DM back before the game even started. That's what "session zero" is for. So that everyone knows what kind of game they're playing and what the expectations are.

That's not the only way to play. I personally happen to prefer an old-school, "Combat as War, no guarantee that any given encounter is actually appropriate for you" style of game. And your "secret" is completely wrong for that style of play

But, hopefully, you'll cover that in session 0.

[War_lord]

So, how many different, conflicting, definitive answers to the effectiveness of pikes do we have so far? Even If one of those is correct, it means that every other one is wrong, or at least incomplete. I'm not liking the odds.

If I'm sitting down to play D&D*, I want to play by the rules of D&D, not "random idiot #4276's opinion of how weapons work, the game". Now, if they've actually bothered to write down all their (probably wrong) "realistic " rules, I'll read through their "historically accurate, totally realistic" rules, and then calmly and politely ask them just WTF they were thinking - what did they think it could possibly add to the enjoyment of the game to add in all this overhead? EDIT: and where did they find a historically accurate dragon to model weapon effectiveness against?

Your confusing real world tactics and game tactics. When you have pounce, great cleave, and the ability to take free 5" steps between cleave attacks, the frontal charge is pretty bloody effective, especially compared to anything else said character could do.

If I wanted real world rules, I'd care more about killing people irl.

And now you're attacking a strawman. No one has brought up homebrew in this entire thread, no one has brought up adding additional rules in this thread. Congratulations on spending most of your post attacking an argument no one actually made.

If your character is a Barbarian with all the feats needed to charge 8 Orcs and murder them all single handily, then hey, that's going to be the best tactic for any encounter with 8 Orcs. If your build isn't specifically for that, and you do it anyway, that's stupid. As I said, a charge can be effective, in some cases, not all cases. If you read the thread that spawned Vitruvian's salt, that party was not in a situation where charging was the best, or even a viable, option.

It's strange for someone claiming to be all about Combat as War to be backing up an OP whose entire rant was that Combat as War is "GM hubris".

[icefractal]

The problem with the hostage scenario is that the D&D rules (3E at least, but I don't think it's much better in any edition) handle "knife to the throat" rather badly.

Here's how it goes by 3E RAW:
1) If the thief didn't surprise the PCs, this is a completely normal fight that happens to start with the thief and hostage grappling (so shooting at either is risky). The thief gets no special ability to stab the hostage other than if he wins initiative he can do it normally.

2) If the thief did surprise the PCs, he could use his surprise round to ready an action (stab the hostage if anyone attacks him). At that point, there's nothing the PCs can do to prevent him doing that, short of KO'ing him in a single attack that comes from surprise. However, the stab will just be a normal knife attack, nothing special. He won't even get Sneak Attack if the PCs delay until the hostage's initiative comes up.

That's pretty unsatisfying, both in that it doesn't work unless the hostage is pretty weak, and that when it does work it's almost impossible to prevent. So GMs often modify how the rules work. However, the GMs idea of "how it would realistically work" may not be the same as the players' ideas of that, and so you get conflict.


Hero System handles this better, and so I'd port the rule from that (but I'd announce I was doing so up front):
1) You can use the "Cover" maneuver to ready an attack against someone. When the attack happens, it's under the conditions when the Cover was initiated. So if you did it from surprise, it's against flat-footed AC. If you did it when someone was asleep or otherwise helpless, it's an auto-crit (even if they woke up since then).

2) A Cover can be broken two ways - with a distraction (successful Bluff or Intimidate), or by the hostage slipping out of position (opposed skill check, Escape Artist, Sleight of Hand, or Acrobatics/Tumble could all make sense).

Also I would probably name it something other the "Cover" to avoid confusion.

[War_lord]

Honestly if it were me, I'd just not use that scenario. Trying to adopt the rules to do something they were never meant to cover is going to cause way more trouble then just doing the situation differently. If I'm at the point where the rules of the system are directly conflicting with the type of game we want to play, that's a sign it's time for a new system.

[Vitruviansquid]

A lot of people are writing that a GM should simply apply the RPG's rules when resolving a combat scenario. I don't disagree.

To re-iterate, GM hubris occurs during GM fiat. You might argue to simply avoid GM fiat, but as pointed out here:


The problem with the hostage scenario is that the D&D rules (3E at least, but I don't think it's much better in any edition) handle "knife to the throat" rather badly.

Here's how it goes by 3E RAW:
1) If the thief didn't surprise the PCs, this is a completely normal fight that happens to start with the thief and hostage grappling (so shooting at either is risky). The thief gets no special ability to stab the hostage other than if he wins initiative he can do it normally.

2) If the thief did surprise the PCs, he could use his surprise round to ready an action (stab the hostage if anyone attacks him). At that point, there's nothing the PCs can do to prevent him doing that, short of KO'ing him in a single attack that comes from surprise. However, the stab will just be a normal knife attack, nothing special. He won't even get Sneak Attack if the PCs delay until the hostage's initiative comes up.

That's pretty unsatisfying, both in that it doesn't work unless the hostage is pretty weak, and that when it does work it's almost impossible to prevent. So GMs often modify how the rules work. However, the GMs idea of "how it would realistically work" may not be the same as the players' ideas of that, and so you get conflict.


there are many times when GM needs to step into grey areas or areas where the RPG's rules aren't so hot.

[RazorChain]

A lot of people are writing that a GM should simply apply the RPG's rules when resolving a combat scenario. I don't disagree.

To re-iterate, GM hubris occurs during GM fiat. You might argue to simply avoid GM fiat, but as pointed out here:



there are many times when GM needs to step into grey areas or areas where the RPG's rules aren't so hot.

The problem is that the rules are the common ground for the players and the GM to play the game. If 5 strangers sit down to play D&D and all of them know the system then they'll base their actions according to the rules. If the GM starts changing the rules on the fly then the players will have harder time choosing their actions especially in a rigid rule system. Fast and loose system are easier in that regard because the GM can just declare a penalty or a target number and the players roll.

[RazorChain]

3. "I created this difficult situation that is actually super fair, but my players failed it and are now complaining that it isn't fair."

Consider this situation:

A gang of thieves has captured the princess, and the players must rescue the princess from the gang of thieves. The players fight through the thieves' hideout until they reach the last room where the thieves' leader is holding the princess with a knife to her throat. So what are the players to do?

They could try to have the archer shoot an arrow that hits the thief in the head before he can react... But now the players have to guess whether the GM thinks that's a smart idea or not. They have to guess ...

- How quickly the GM thinks people's reactions are, and whether the thieves' leader actually has high reactions to slit the princess's throat before the arrow hits?
- How accurate does the GM think bows can get? Or, hell, if your character is wielding a musket, things just got far more complicated.
- Does the GM straight up think this action movie trope is stupid and will never let the players do it?
- Does the GM think your archer character is a supernaturally fast and deadly shot, or is he like "guy at gym" fast and deadly?
- Does the GM think, just because you are playing a game with HP, that an arrow hitting the thieves' leader's head will actually kill him outright, stun him with pain long enough for the princess to get away from him, or not stun him with pain because the rulebook doesn't say it will?

And the thing to point out is, you are in no way smart enough to know what is the best way to rescue the princess in this scenario is because there are undoubtedly factors that exist which you did not consider, factors which you consider but are did not really exist, and your players, ON TOP OF considering every factor they think will be relevant, also has to consider whether or not the GM understands those factors.


Well in this scenario we much consider the GM's intent


The Combat Happy Computer Gamer GM The princess is of no consequence, she was only the carrot to bring you through a series of combat encounter and the Thieves Leader is an AWESOME MULTI STAGE BOSS FIGHT where after you chip away the leaders HP he will change into a wererat with all his HP's restored so you can fight him all over again. If you are partaking in this game you might even not care about the princess' fate because you're about to have an AWESOME MULTI STAGE BOSS FIGHT!!!

Thomas the Tank Engine GM This GM has already decided how this scenario will resolve itself, don't you worry, your input or actions are of no consequence while he plays through his masturbatory fantasy. This is just another train stop. CHOO CHOO!

The improviser GM He doesn't know how you ended in this scene or how it's going to be resolved but you can be sure he'll be open to all solutions.

The John Wick Hit 'em where it hurts GM The NPC you have had a romantic affair with was a princess in disguise all the time, now that you're about to rescue her she blurts out that she's pregnant with your child just before her throat gets slit. You try in vain to stop the bleeding but the GM goes into great detail how blood spurts from her arteries, coloring the floor red and she dies in your blood soaked arms. To this GM the goal was to hit you were it hurt and destroy your favorite NPC to test your moral fiber. This is the GM that will make your paladin fall and you will think it was your choice.

The Joe Schmoe GM He didn't want to be GM in the first place and with no firm grasps of the rules he'll make you roll a die....high you succeed, low you fail.

The Planner GM He has predicted all your actions already and you'll most likely succeed or fail to rescue the princess according to his plans. He's railroading you and has been all along and you don't even realize it.

The Storyteller GM It doesn't matter either way to him as both lead to a good story and drama. He's already playing in his mind that great encounter with the king when you have to explain his daughter is dead or how the princess will fall hopelessly for you as her rescuer and how that will make a good soap opera.

The reality simulation GM He's already calculated how fast the arrow travels when you try to shoot the Thieves Leader in the head and how fast a human being can react to it. Your success or failure will be based on empirical evidence

[Quertus]

And now you're attacking a strawman. No one has brought up homebrew in this entire thread, no one has brought up adding additional rules in this thread. Congratulations on spending most of your post attacking an argument no one actually made.

If your character is a Barbarian with all the feats needed to charge 8 Orcs and murder them all single handily, then hey, that's going to be the best tactic for any encounter with 8 Orcs. If your build isn't specifically for that, and you do it anyway, that's stupid. As I said, a charge can be effective, in some cases, not all cases. If you read the thread that spawned Vitruvian's salt, that party was not in a situation where charging was the best, or even a viable, option.

It's strange for someone claiming to be all about Combat as War to be backing up an OP whose entire rant was that Combat as War is "GM hubris".

So that's what it feels like to attack a straw man.

Yeah, I guess I was confused, as I view Homebrew as the Lawful counterpart to Chaos's Rulings. Mostly, I was ranting about a bunch of my old GMs, and trying to hope the reader would apply that to the discussion. Bad form on my part.

And, yes, I agree that even a 3e charge build should carry at least a bow, and be ready to try other options, should their tactic fail.


A lot of people are writing that a GM should simply apply the RPG's rules when resolving a combat scenario. I don't disagree.

To re-iterate, GM hubris occurs during GM fiat. You might argue to simply avoid GM fiat, but as pointed out here:

there are many times when GM needs to step into grey areas or areas where the RPG's rules aren't so hot.


The problem is that the rules are the common ground for the players and the GM to play the game. If 5 strangers sit down to play D&D and all of them know the system then they'll base their actions according to the rules. If the GM starts changing the rules on the fly then the players will have harder time choosing their actions especially in a rigid rule system. Fast and loose system are easier in that regard because the GM can just declare a penalty or a target number and the players roll.

Here, I can more directly apply my experiences, and say that, with most of the GMs I've had, I would not enjoy them having the option to pick a bonus / penalty / target number. In fact, I've only had one GM where I would actually feel comfortable saying, sure, we don't need rules, just make everything up on the fly. Because I've only had one GM for whom I can say that every ruling left me saying, "that's reasonable".

And, for the record, I am decidedly not that GM.

So I find it odd that a proposed solution to GM hubris in grey areas of rulings is to move towards a system composed almost entirely of grey. Do you feel that this works because it gives the GM more practice with rulings? Because it gives the players more experience with the GMs style of rulings so that they better know what to expect? Or some other reason I have yet to divine?

[Hackulator]

Understanding of real life tactics has exactly nothing to do with understanding D&D tactics.

[Vitruviansquid]

So I find it odd that a proposed solution to GM hubris in grey areas of rulings is to move towards a system composed almost entirely of grey. Do you feel that this works because it gives the GM more practice with rulings? Because it gives the players more experience with the GMs style of rulings so that they better know what to expect? Or some other reason I have yet to divine?

I would say the solution is for GMs to have more communication and transparency with players. They should also take a default attitude of open-mindedness toward players' solutions.

[RazorChain]

Here, I can more directly apply my experiences, and say that, with most of the GMs I've had, I would not enjoy them having the option to pick a bonus / penalty / target number. In fact, I've only had one GM where I would actually feel comfortable saying, sure, we don't need rules, just make everything up on the fly. Because I've only had one GM for whom I can say that every ruling left me saying, "that's reasonable".

And, for the record, I am decidedly not that GM.

So I find it odd that a proposed solution to GM hubris in grey areas of rulings is to move towards a system composed almost entirely of grey. Do you feel that this works because it gives the GM more practice with rulings? Because it gives the players more experience with the GMs style of rulings so that they better know what to expect? Or some other reason I have yet to divine?

I'm not proposing to move towards grey but lot of lighter systems are mostly grey which leads to that the GM must make rulings simply because the rules dont cover the situation at hand.

Even crunchy system like Gurps has no hard rule for skill penalties because they know that they cant cover all situations but instead the system has guidelines

I stick to rules because its a common ground for me and my players. If we find the rules not to our liking we make houserules

If we think the rules are totally worthless we play something else.

[Vitruviansquid]

Well in this scenario we much consider the GM's intent


The Combat Happy Computer Gamer GM The princess is of no consequence, she was only the carrot to bring you through a series of combat encounter and the Thieves Leader is an AWESOME MULTI STAGE BOSS FIGHT where after you chip away the leaders HP he will change into a wererat with all his HP's restored so you can fight him all over again. If you are partaking in this game you might even not care about the princess' fate because you're about to have an AWESOME MULTI STAGE BOSS FIGHT!!!

Thomas the Tank Engine GM This GM has already decided how this scenario will resolve itself, don't you worry, your input or actions are of no consequence while he plays through his masturbatory fantasy. This is just another train stop. CHOO CHOO!

The improviser GM He doesn't know how you ended in this scene or how it's going to be resolved but you can be sure he'll be open to all solutions.

The John Wick Hit 'em where it hurts GM The NPC you have had a romantic affair with was a princess in disguise all the time, now that you're about to rescue her she blurts out that she's pregnant with your child just before her throat gets slit. You try in vain to stop the bleeding but the GM goes into great detail how blood spurts from her arteries, coloring the floor red and she dies in your blood soaked arms. To this GM the goal was to hit you were it hurt and destroy your favorite NPC to test your moral fiber. This is the GM that will make your paladin fall and you will think it was your choice.

The Joe Schmoe GM He didn't want to be GM in the first place and with no firm grasps of the rules he'll make you roll a die....high you succeed, low you fail.

The Planner GM He has predicted all your actions already and you'll most likely succeed or fail to rescue the princess according to his plans. He's railroading you and has been all along and you don't even realize it.

The Storyteller GM It doesn't matter either way to him as both lead to a good story and drama. He's already playing in his mind that great encounter with the king when you have to explain his daughter is dead or how the princess will fall hopelessly for you as her rescuer and how that will make a good soap opera.

The reality simulation GM He's already calculated how fast the arrow travels when you try to shoot the Thieves Leader in the head and how fast a human being can react to it. Your success or failure will be based on empirical evidence

Out of all of these, I am only talking about reality simulation GM in this thread about Gm hubris. At least the railroading GMs understand that theyare railroading.

[Roxxy]

This can also be an issue of the GM not really fitting the game the players want. Not all players really want a tactically complex game where they have to cafefully consider their moves, either, and sometimes people are in the mood for one kind of game now and a different kind later.

To put it more bluntly, I generally prefer games where I can find the enemy and do glorious battle, not games where I need to carefully strategize. Not fun for me. Political and moral complexity I love, but in combat I just want to wreak havoc and sow chaos. There's a reason I reach for a Far Cry game instead of ARMA when I want to play a shooter, and it carries over to RPGs.

[RazorChain]

Out of all of these, I am only talking about reality simulation GM in this thread about Gm hubris. At least the railroading GMs understand that theyare railroading.

You see it was a trick proposition. The GM's intent should not matter, what should matter is that the GM finds out the Thieves' Leader intent. Why is he holding the princess as a hostage? What does he hope to accomplish? Can he be reasoned with? Is he really willing to kill that princess and be tortured for days if he gets caught? Does he know she is a princess?

To me the only hubris is not answering those questions. The rules should sort the rest out.

[Vitruviansquid]

You see it was a trick proposition. The GM's intent should not matter, what should matter is that the GM finds out the Thieves' Leader intent. Why is he holding the princess as a hostage? What does he hope to accomplish? Can he be reasoned with? Is he really willing to kill that princess and be tortured for days if he gets caught? Does he know she is a princess?

To me the only hubris is not answering those questions. The rules should sort the rest out.

I guess I don't understand what you think the point I'm trying to make is?

This is the thread about why GM hubris is bad. GM hubris is exactly assuming that players should know why the thieves' leader is holding the princess hostage, is exactly assuming that players should know what he hopes to accomplish, is exactly assuming that players should know whether he can be reasoned with, is exactly assuming that players should know is he really willing to kill that princess and be tortured for days if he gets caught, is exactly assuming that players should already know whether the thieves' leader knows the princess is a princess, and so on.

GM hubris is a GM thinking that the players understand what he understands, when in fact they do not and should not because the players' brains aren't working in the same way the GM's is.

This is not a thread about why the multiple examples of railroading you posted is bad. Sure, railroading is, generally, not that great, but this is not the thread for talking about railroading. You can open up another thread about why railroading is bad if you want to.

It just seems to me that you are now basically saying "ah-ha! I have tricked you into admitting that this thing you have been saying all along is right! I have got you!"

[RazorChain]

I guess I don't understand what you think the point I'm trying to make is?

This is the thread about why GM hubris is bad. GM hubris is exactly assuming that players should know why the thieves' leader is holding the princess hostage, is exactly assuming that players should know what he hopes to accomplish, is exactly assuming that players should know whether he can be reasoned with, is exactly assuming that players should know is he really willing to kill that princess and be tortured for days if he gets caught, is exactly assuming that players should already know whether the thieves' leader knows the princess is a princess, and so on.

GM hubris is a GM thinking that the players understand what he understands, when in fact they do not and should not because the players' brains aren't working in the same way the GM's is.

This is not a thread about why the multiple examples of railroading you posted is bad. Sure, railroading is, generally, not that great, but this is not the thread for talking about railroading. You can open up another thread about why railroading is bad if you want to.

It just seems to me that you are now basically saying "ah-ha! I have tricked you into admitting that this thing you have been saying all along is right! I have got you!"

Oh here I though GM hubris was that he thinks himself superior to his players, arrogant or full of himself. So to me a GM trying to use empirical evidence to base a ruling on if the rules don't cover would somebody who is not hubristic.

It is arrogant of the GM that the players can know his intent, it is foolish of him to suppose that they know his NPC's intent.

What I'm saying that the GM's intent should not matter. The players can't know his intent, different GM's have different intent. The players must content themselves with the Thieves' Leader intent and finding that out, instead of trying to gauge the GM's intent. The rules should give the players a basic understanding of how they can resolve the situation. If the GM is open to multiple solutions then it's not Hubris, if there is only one solution and the GM supposes that the players should know it then it's hubristic (and railroady)

[Vitruviansquid]

This can also be an issue of the GM not really fitting the game the players want. Not all players really want a tactically complex game where they have to cafefully consider their moves, either, and sometimes people are in the mood for one kind of game now and a different kind later.

To put it more bluntly, I generally prefer games where I can find the enemy and do glorious battle, not games where I need to carefully strategize. Not fun for me. Political and moral complexity I love, but in combat I just want to wreak havoc and sow chaos. There's a reason I reach for a Far Cry game instead of ARMA when I want to play a shooter, and it carries over to RPGs.

While I agree with you that a game should include a good general understanding of what each player and the GM wants out of it, that is not the main point I am trying to make, on second thought. If anyone wants to accuse me of moving the goalpost, sure.

The thing is, this is done very often with military tactics, but it is actually also done in very many situations besides.

There are GMs who are very sure they understand how people think, and when they say "I am making a campaign setting unlike all these other settings that just depend on characters being stupid." Then you read their setting, and it's all about *how they would think*. And then you often realize they think it is the characters being stupid when...

1. A character with potentially setting-dominating power does NOT decide to take over the world. For example, they are annoyed that an extremely powerful wizard with godlike powers in D&D 3.5 doesn't for some reason take charge of everything in the setting by scrying and killing everything else that could challenge him and then running the world like it was his own personal state.

2. A character with the power to potentially make everyone else's life super simple doesn't. Once again, in D&D 3.5, people say that casters not could, not should, but inevitably will just make a utopia of free bread and water for everyone.

To which I would say... I dunno about that, I read The Watchmen and it also kinda makes sense that a godlike being would just become kinda detached from mortals lives. Why run a state when states don't matter to you any more? Why solve world hunger when you don't empathize with the hungry and dying any longer? It also seems a lot like hubris to assume one would do either especially if the being gets godlike powers through super intelligence.

Because when you get down to it, the third situation I put up there with the thieves' leader and the princess can really also include why it is ludicrous for the GM to say why people will act a certain way. Considering the party attempts to talk the thieves' leader into letting the princess go, your players might have to guess whether...

- GM believes a hostage taker will definitely make good on his promises
- GM did not see this as a hostage situation and really sees it as more of a puzzle for how the party can physically get the princess away from the thieves' leader's clutches.
- GM believes the thieves' leader to be smart or panicked.

and so on.

I think I might re-word this as:

In the collaborative fiction exercise that is tabletop RPGs, one should recognize that there many different, valid ways of looking at a solution.

Or that's kind of abstract and vague, so...

In the collaborative fiction exercise that is tabletop RPGs, one should realize that one's conclusions are rarely-if-ever/never the only possible conclusions.

Of if that's kind of wishy-washy...

In the collaborate fiction exercise that is tabletop RPGs, it is important to be transparent about expectations and open-minded that other participants will sensibly not have the same expectations.

Ehhhhhh, is anyone picking up what I'm putting down here?

[Vitruviansquid]

Oh here I though GM hubris was that he thinks himself superior to his players, arrogant or full of himself. So to me a GM trying to use empirical evidence to base a ruling on if the rules don't cover would somebody who is not hubristic.

Well, it is a good life tip to not think yourself superior to others, but, yeah, that is not exactly what I've been railing about in this thread.

But the thing is, a GM who is trying to use empirical evidence to base a ruling on is engaging in hubris. To work concretely within the example, it doesn't matter how much research the GM has on reaction times and psychology and on the construction of bows and the aerodynamism of arrows and on the pressure it takes for a knife to slit a throat or whatever. At some point, all this research breaks down when you realize the game is about a fantasy archer who is supposed to be fantastically good at shooting a bow. At some point, all this research also breaks down at the realization the player is left to guess how much research you did, and if you, as a fallible human being, ignored any facts that might be a factor.

So really, to claim that you have the solution for this problem is to start to believe you have omniscience, which is fairly deep into the domain of "hubris."

To move away from the example and into the abstract level, you will never have ALL the factors calculated for a particular situation; even if you did, your players have to guess that you indeed have ALL the factors calculated.


It is arrogant of the GM that the players can know his intent, it is foolish of him to suppose that they know his NPC's intent.

What I'm saying that the GM's intent should not matter. The players can't know his intent, different GM's have different intent. The players must content themselves with the Thieves' Leader intent and finding that out, instead of trying to gauge the GM's intent. The rules should give the players a basic understanding of how they can resolve the situation. If the GM is open to multiple solutions then it's not Hubris, if there is only one solution and the GM supposes that the players should know it then it's hubristic (and railroady)

Right, it is arrogant that the GM thinks the players know his intent. It is also foolish to suppose the players know the NPC's intent (unless it was told to them in some way). I agree with those.

When you say the GM's intent should not matter... well, there's some ambiguity there, so I want to make sure. This is a thread giving GMs advice, so I think the GM's intents should matter. When the GM's smart about his intentions, it will lead to good games. When GM's dumb about his intentions, it will lead to bad games. Two cases:

1. If the GM intends to run a game that includes reveling in some hyper-realism... that is dumb. As I have said, a GM cannot run a hyper-realistic game because that would be to claim omniscience (explained above). He will end up being extremely unfair to his players and not understand that he is being unfair.

2. If the GM intends to run a game for him and the players to enjoy crafting a cooperative storyline or to enjoy him and his players putting each other in some challenging scenarios, then that is not dumb.

But if you are saying the GM's intentions *should* not matter to the players playing the game trying to solve the hostage princess situation, then sure. I agree it should indeed not matter. That is why, as you have said, a GM who is open to multiple solutions is not engaging in bad game design due to hubris while a GM who only wants his one solution is engaging in bad game design due to hubris. It is only when a GM engages in hubris that it forces players to start considering GM intentions.

Still, I have a problem with the portion I underlined. As icefractal's post that I quoted explains, there are times when it is unsatisfactory to use the game's rules to resolve a situation. I would also submit there are times when your game's rules do not have a solution to your problem. Thus, if your solution to getting rid of these things you do not like is to simply follow the rules, I think that is acknowledging half of the solution. I think the other half is that when you do use GM fiat, you need to be transparent and open-minded.

edit: added a line to an unclear explanation.

[Satinavian]

But the thing is, a GM who is trying to use empirical evidence to base a ruling on is engaging in hubris.Rubbish. On what else is he supposed to base his decision if not on his understanding of the situation and knowledge about similar cases.

So really, to claim that you have the solution for this problem is to start to believe you have omniscience, which is fairly deep into the domain of "hubris."You still have not managed to explain where this strange claim to omniscience comes from. DMs don't do that. If a DM tries to make the best decision his knowledge allows, he is usually still pretty aware that he is making some guesses.

And that is his job, as we are explicitly talking about situations not covered by the rules and requiring GM-rulings instead.

To move away from the example and into the abstract level, you will never have ALL the factors calculated for a particular situation; even if you did, your players have to guess that you indeed have ALL the factors calculated.And why does that matter ?


I have more and more problems following you at all. You are obviously complainingh about GM rulings. GM rulings in situiations where the rules demand GM rulings either explicitely or by vitue of not covering the stuff and referring to the GM in unclear cases.

But what exactly is your problem ? Where does the hybris come in ? When is a GM-decision in such a case wrong and a case of hybris, when is it alright ? How would a player know ?

[Vitruviansquid]

Rubbish. On what else is he supposed to base his decision if not on his understanding of the situation and knowledge about similar cases.

See, your quote implies that I am saying a GM should not base his decision on his understanding of the situation and knowledge about similar cases. Thus, the GM should be somewhere in crazy Cthulhu town where decisions are based on nothing.

That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is the GM should base his decisions on his understanding of the situation and knowledge about similar cases, AND his players' understanding of the situation and their knowledge about similar cases, AND if possible, the rules' understanding of the situation and its knowledge about similar cases.

So let's say we have a situation with the thieves' leader and the princess hostage again.

A DM with hubris says: "okay, here's the situation. How are you going to rescue the princess?"

A player says: "I shoot the thieves' leader in the head with my bow so he either dies or is in too much pain to stop the princess from running away from him."

DM with hubris replies: "okay, obviously the princess gets her throat slit because I considered these 5 factors that indicate your arrow will not land in time for the thief to slit the princess's throat... Why don't you players act more tactically or think in realistic terms about what would happen when you shoot the arrow?"



A DM without hubris says: "okay, here's the situation. How are you going to the rescue the princess?"

Archer player says: "I shoot the thieves' leader in the head with my bow so he either dies or is in too much pain to stop the princess from running away from him."

DM without hubris says: "okay, so if you want to do this, there will be a check to make sure you shoot the arrow accurately enough to hit him in the head and not the princess. The thieves' leader will also make a reflex check to see if he can notice the archer nocking his arrow before slitting the princess's throat."

Bard player says: "hold on, most of the time, when you're in a hostage situation, the point isn't to actually take out the hostage and make good on your threat, because then you have no leverage. The thieves' leader is probably a seasoned criminal. Shouldn't he know this and be unprepared to slit the princess's throat anyways?"

DM without hubris says: "y'know what, that might be true. But this is also a situation where he's got a lot of adrenaline going through his system so he might not be really thinking clearly."

Bard player says: "okay, so can I try and talk him down before archer shoots his arrow?"

DM without hubris says: "I don't know, does the archer player let you do that, or would he have shot the instant it came into his mind?"

Archer player says: "I probably would've shot the instant it came into my mind."

DM without hubris says: "okay, so the thieves' leader is going to make a reflect check, then a wisdom check to see if he slits the princess's throat or not, and the archer can still fail his shooting check. Let's make those checks and see what happens."



You still have not managed to explain where this strange claim to omniscience comes from. DMs don't do that. If a DM tries to make the best decision his knowledge allows, he is usually still pretty aware that he is making some guesses.

Whence the claim to omniscience?

Take this quote of War_lord:


Well to "consider" your points. You have the first fact wrong, the rule is that a dense formation of infantry will defeat a cavalry charge. Why? Because a warhorse will not charge a hedgerow of steel, be it spears, pikes or bayonets, because a horse is an intelligent animal and will not do something obviously suicidal. Now, as for the infantry doing " something wrong and expose a gap for the cavalry to come in", yes, that did happen, when the infantry was poorly trained, and the era of the Knightly charge coincided with the era of poorly trained, poorly equipped and poorly disciplined levy infantry forces. When the Knightly charge did clash with trained and disciplined infantry, they got slaughtered, see for example Golden Spurs, or Crécy. Once it became clear to the leaders of the time that correctly deployed infantry could resist a charge, the cavalry returned to their traditional role as a flanking element. But, like with all military innovation, there was a painful teething period where knights did make charges that were objectively suicidal.

If I was going to be as full of hubris as War_lord, but I was enchanted by the cavalry instead of the infantry, I would respond to this section of his post to the effect of:

1. If you had cavalrymen dumb enough or ill-disciplined enough to charge a forest of spearpoints, then you must give me infantry dumb enough or ill-disciplined enough to break in the face of charging cavalry. For your Golden Spurs and Crecy, you must give me the Battle of Patay (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Patay), where English infantry were caught out by cavalry and then could not regroup in time against the cavalry's speed to offer resistance, and you must give me the Battle of Dyrrhachium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dyrrhachium_(1081)) where even the elite Byzantine unit, the Varangian Guard, were disordered by foolishly pursuing the Norman Knights who fled from them with superior speed and caused them to be vulnerable to the Norman infantry.

2. You cite the battle of the Golden Spurs to show that infantry had the advantage over cavalry. Except that is not fair, because the Golden Spurs was fought on terrain that greatly favored the infantry. So you have the steadiness of heavy infantry PLUS swampy terrain. On the opposite side, I could cite the Battle of Falkirk where the English cavalry overcomes the Scottish schiltron with a mobility advantage PLUS the ability to wait out the infantry with superior archers. You have your plus, I have my plus.

3. I could even bring up that if you would specify well-trained, heavily-equipped, well-disciplined infantry like the famous Swiss pikemen or the Czech Hussites or the English Longbowmen, then I would say why don't you give me the famous Polish Winged Hussars or give me Alexander's mounted companions or give me Mongolian lancers whose tactics and organization were so much more sophisticated than their infantry opponents', they would've found a way to outsmart and outmaneuver the infantry no matter what.

He might retort something to the tune that yes, but Eastern European infantry was known to be of poor quality and the cavalry to be of high quality, and if the Winged Hussars ever met ______, they would've been stopped cold. And I might retort something to the tune that, yes, but Western European cavalry was known to be of poor quality and the infantry of high quality, so you don't know that if the Winged Hussars ever met _______, they would've ran right over them.

Then he would have his retort, and I would have my retort, and we would go on and on.

And we would go on because the fact of the matter is that our topic is unbelievably complex. We are looking at a giant number of facts to attempt to boil them down to a stupidly simple maxim: Heavy infantry in dense formation beats cavalry, OR cavalry beats heavy infantry in dense formation.

A historian may go back and look at these battles, and retrospectively attribute a win or a loss of some battle to one factor or another. Current scholarship seems to be at odds with past scholarship on some topics (whether Agincourt was won by the English archers shooting the French knights or by them engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the French knights, for instance), but even if we were to be generous and assume that today's scholarship is right... it would be evident that upsets happen often, and leaders of the time did not always expect them. If I was to somehow resurrect and gather genuine World War 2 Japanese admirals around to play a tabletop RPG where we somehow had to GM fiat naval battles... the majority of them would apparently bet that battleships had the advantage over carriers.

So in the face of all this uncertainty, what is a GM to do?

If the GM's idea is to say "well, I am very smart, and an expert in this field, and I can indeed consider ALL the factors"... that is what I am referring to when I say the GM has claimed omniscience.

[RazorChain]

When you say the GM's intent should not matter... well, there's some ambiguity there, so I want to make sure. This is a thread giving GMs advice, so I think the GM's intents should matter. When the GM's smart about his intentions, it will lead to good games. When GM's dumb about his intentions, it will lead to bad games. Two cases:

1. If the GM intends to run a game that includes reveling in some hyper-realism... that is dumb. As I have said, a GM cannot run a hyper-realistic game because that would be to claim omniscience (explained above). He will end up being extremely unfair to his players and not understand that he is being unfair.

I agree on that, you can never model the universe on a dice roll. But using emperical evidence to base a ruling on isn't so inherently bad, it's a better base than pure speculation. Of course when we are moving into the fantastic it becomes more difficult. In this case I'm talking about verifiable observation, if the player wants his "strong guy from the gym" to jump over a 2 storey building then the GM can rule that he can't because he's basing that on the world high jump record is 2.45 meters or 8 feet.



2. If the GM intends to run a game for him and the players to enjoy crafting a cooperative storyline or to enjoy him and his players putting each other in some challenging scenarios, then that is not dumb.

But if you are saying the GM's intentions *should* not matter to the players playing the game trying to solve the hostage princess situation, then sure. I agree it should indeed not matter. That is why, as you have said, a GM who is open to multiple solutions is not engaging in bad game design due to hubris while a GM who only wants his one solution is engaging in bad game design due to hubris. It is only when a GM engages in hubris that it forces players to start considering GM intentions.

Still, I have a problem with the portion I underlined. As icefractal's post that I quoted explains, there are times when it is unsatisfactory to use the game's rules to resolve a situation. I would also submit there are times when your game's rules do not have a solution to your problem. Thus, if your solution to getting rid of these things you do not like is to simply follow the rules, I think that is acknowledging half of the solution. I think the other half is that when you do use GM fiat, you need to be transparent and open-minded.

edit: added a line to an unclear explanation.

Of course most GM's have some intent behind a scenario. I for example like to ask moral questions through play, or put up scenes where there is no clear right choice. But you are right on the money that the GM's intent should not matter to the players. If the players are trying to guess the GM's intent then that could arguably be because the players don't know how to proceed if they don't know his intent. I have been playing for a long time and with different GM's but I've rarely if never tried to guess the GM's intent, his intent will often be revealed later when I have acted in accordance with the character I'm playing.

What I mean about: The rules should give the players a basic understanding of how they can resolve the situation Is that the players will interact with the world through the rules and how they will deal with a situation will conform with the rules. In D&D the players know there is no headshot and even if they shoot the leader they have no way to know what level he is or how many HP so they might try to resolve the situation with magic or diplomacy. In Gurps a headshot is perfectly viable, heck if the shooter is good he might even go for the brain. But when the players are in doubt and the basic understanding fails or is unclear it helps alot if the GM tells the players their chances before they try something. Of course it's also up to the players to ask if they can do something and what are their chances. Transparency helps the players to make a decision, the GM and players can even keep this IC, where the GM tells the player how his character judges a situation. The rules don't cover everything but give some sort of understanding and when a GM makes a ruling he should try to do so in accordance with the rules so that there isn't a jarring disconnection between the ruling and the rules.

[Vitruviansquid]

I agree on that, you can never model the universe on a dice roll. But using emperical evidence to base a ruling on isn't so inherently bad, it's a better base than pure speculation. Of course when we are moving into the fantastic it becomes more difficult. In this case I'm talking about verifiable observation, if the player wants his "strong guy from the gym" to jump over a 2 storey building then the GM can rule that he can't because he's basing that on the world high jump record is 2.45 meters or 8 feet.

I think that, after all, we are mostly on the same page.

But for this particular example, I would say that sure, both players and GMs can be wildly off base when they think they know how the world works. Fortunately, and I am going to italicize for another maxim I would like people to adopt, it is unnecessary to find out the truth of the simulation in order to have a satisfactory simulation.

So if the world high jump record is 2.45 meters and we are playing a game that is simulating "guy at gym" rather than superheroes...

Let's say our game takes place in Crazytown, and the player says he believes his guy at the gym can jump 2 stories. The GM is also crazy and believes the guy at the gym character can jump 1.5 stories.

Negotiation and transparency is still a good option for the GM and player to both work out a decent ruling that both would be satisfied by. The player can give his insane reasons why guy at gym can jump 2 stories, the GM can give his crazy reasons why that should be limited to only 1.5 stories, and even if it ends up that the GM must say, "well, I am the GM and what I say goes, and I say 1.5 stories" at the very least the player can then factor into the situation that his character can only jump 1.5 stories and play appropriately. I would personally expect the two to end up at 1.75 stories, though that is of no consequence.


Of course most GM's have some intent behind a scenario. I for example like to ask moral questions through play, or put up scenes where there is no clear right choice. But you are right on the money that the GM's intent should not matter to the players. If the players are trying to guess the GM's intent then that could arguably be because the players don't know how to proceed if they don't know his intent. I have been playing for a long time and with different GM's but I've rarely if never tried to guess the GM's intent, his intent will often be revealed later when I have acted in accordance with the character I'm playing.

What I mean about: The rules should give the players a basic understanding of how they can resolve the situation Is that the players will interact with the world through the rules and how they will deal with a situation will conform with the rules. In D&D the players know there is no headshot and even if they shoot the leader they have no way to know what level he is or how many HP so they might try to resolve the situation with magic or diplomacy. In Gurps a headshot is perfectly viable, heck if the shooter is good he might even go for the brain. But when the players are in doubt and the basic understanding fails or is unclear it helps alot if the GM tells the players their chances before they try something. Of course it's also up to the players to ask if they can do something and what are their chances. Transparency helps the players to make a decision, the GM and players can even keep this IC, where the GM tells the player how his character judges a situation. The rules don't cover everything but give some sort of understanding and when a GM makes a ruling he should try to do so in accordance with the rules so that there isn't a jarring disconnection between the ruling and the rules.

So the rules give players a basic understanding of how to resolve a situation, and if the GM and players want to move away from the rules for some reason, then "it helps alot if the GM tells the players their chances before they try something."

I agree with that. That's good. That's been my stance.

[Darth Ultron]

What I'm saying is the GM should base his decisions on his understanding of the situation and knowledge about similar cases, AND his players' understanding of the situation and their knowledge about similar cases, AND if possible, the rules' understanding of the situation and its knowledge about similar cases.


Well, the players and the DM all need to be on the same page. And it is all ways a good idea to take the game a bit slow. Too many DM's and far, far too many players like to ''speed through'' the game, often just to get to the ''big fights''. And this is where you get a lot of ''the DM lightly describes something and the players react foolishly'' problem...like the hostage one. Way too many players will just act and roll, and won't take a couple seconds to ask the DM any questions. And on the other side lots of DM's just describe something and then sit back and let the players fail.

Though, again, this does come down to knowing the players and the players knowing the DM. If the players are more of the ''killz and lootz'' type, then when just about anything happens you can expect them to...kill and loot. So put them in the hostage encounter, and they will be like ''killz!''.

So as a DM, it might be best to avoid this type of thing in the game with this type of player. Or if you do it, do it slowly step, by step, explaining things to the players and giving them all sorts of potential future knowledge and game related information.


Out of all of these, I am only talking about reality simulation GM in this thread about Gm hubris. At least the railroading GMs understand that theyare railroading.

The Reality Simulation Person Gamer can really be a trip.

It's bad enough that someone whose live experience is they have played many video games, will attempt to be an expert on something. It's a bit worse when you get the person who does have some real life experiences and will tell you what they can or can't do: as if their actions were the benchmark for the whole world. A little bit worse where someone who does have some direct knowledge of something will, for some reason, claim to be an expert. Like someone who served in the Army, somehow claiming to be a war and tactical genius...just as they served in the army. And worse when they served in the modern military and will somehow say they have expert knowledge of battlefield archery, because they were in the military.

Of course, then at least half of all people really have no idea about what they are talking about...but oddly won't admit that and will still claim to be an expert. And a lot of people ''know'' things that are half truths at best, really depend on lots of factors, or outright false or even a lie. A lot of people just ''hear'' or ''read'' something somewhere, and then take it as unalterable truth. It's always fun when someone does not ''know how they know something'', they just know it ''somehow'', but they say it ''must'' be true as they ''know it''.

There are a couple really Basic Truths in life, that a lot of people just don't accept. Like:

-No matter what, some times amazing and unexplained things do just happen. Sure they are rare, but not exactly unknown. And really, throughout history lots of ''impossible'' stuff has happened....that is just the nature of reality.

-Really, there is a chance that most reasonable things can happen. A small chance, sure, but still a chance...and they do happen.

-There are a ton of factors involved in anything that can and can't happen..really so many you can't even keep track of them all. And if lots of the factors are just right...then things can happen.

And games like D&D, represent this randomness with dice. It is possible to ''roll a 20'', so to speak, even in real life.