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Talakeal
2018-12-03, 09:49 PM
Well, after a long absence from the forums, and gaming in general*, I have finally moved, started my new job, and somewhat gotten my life on track to the point where I can once again start running a regular game.

The game in question is a hex-crawl in a simplified version of my own Heart of Darkness system, but if you just imagine I am talking about E6 D&D you won't be too far off. We have been playing for about a month know and everything has been going fine, but I started to have some issues with one player during the last session and I was wondering if anyone had some advice to head it off before it becomes yet another tale from Bizarro World.


One of the players (Let's call him player A) has a flaw that makes him a compulsive gambler. We were playing with a pool of party wealth for expenses, but one of the other players (Let's call him player B) complained that it wasn't fair that one player was gambling away a good chunk of the party's money. I actually agreed with him, and we switched to individual wealth. The next session Player B, spontaneously and with no prodding, felt sorry for player A not having any money and decided to buy him a very nice and very expensive suit of armor.

During this weeks session the players had a random encounter. Now, 5% of random encounters are considered "deadly", encounters which even at full strength that party has about a fifty / fifty chance of loosing. This was a deadly encounter, and they were not anywhere near full strength. I rolled on the encounter table, and the resulting revenant completely wrecked the party.

Now, I am not playing with permanent character death, both because I am trying to go easy on the new players and because I am trying to play a more story driven game over a tactical combat simulator. When a PC is "killed" they are instead just KO'd until healed. In the case of a TPK, I have the party get scattered and they will then meet up later back in town, each having rolled on a random mishap table.

So, the revenant wiped the group, and I had them roll on the mishap table. Two players rolled minor mishaps that were unimportant, one (player C) rolled a debilitating injury, player A rolled "lose a random item" (which just so happened to be the armor player B bought him last week), and Player B rolled "lose all money currently on your person".


I also have the players draw a random rumor at the end of each session. These rumors provide future adventure hooks as well as allowing the players to make contact with friendly NPCs who can offer services not normally available. The rumor that was drawn was about a mysterious healer with incredible powers. There was about half an hour left in the session so I decided to let the players follow up with it. They found said doctor, and he was able to cure Player C's debilitating injury for a small fee.

Now, this was supposed to be a mysterious figure to provide flavor to the world as well as allowing the PCs a way to get rid of otherwise permanent injuries. It was just a fortunate coincidence that they happened to draw this particular rumor at that point. But, PCs being PCs, a couple of them were really curious, and they began to interrogate the healer about who they were, where they came from, how they developed such miraculous healing powers, and exactly what the limits of his healing ability were; this questioning took up the rest of the session.

After the session Play B came to me and stated that he was very upset about the game. That he alone suffered the punishment for the group wiping (he wasn't wrong... but that wasn't anyone's intention, just how the dice fell) and furthermore that he was being "punished for doing something nice," in buying player A's armor and that he would never do anything like that again. Furthermore, he felt that is was complete bull that I "pulled a ridiculous nonsense NPC out of my butt just to wave away the other players disadvantage, and then added insult to injury by making him sit through a half hour of boring dialogue that he couldn't care less about."

Then he went on to say that he was really upset about not having full control of character creation.

To explain, 3 of the 5 players are new not only to this game, but to tabletop RPGs in general, and so rather than having the PCs create their own characters I gave them all a detailed questionnaire to fill out and then created their characters for them in accordance with their wishes.

Now, I can understand not liking having the GM make your character sheet for you, that is a huge flag off a control freak DM and I would also chafe at the restriction, so I asked him what was wrong with his character and told him he could change it.

His answer was that his character wasn't min-maxxed enough for his liking, and that (he is playing a sorcerer) he wasn't happy with having an 8 in STR and DEX and only a 16 in CHA, he wanted to drop both his STR and DEX down to 3 and raise his CHA and CON to 18.

And I am just like...…. ugh.


Anyone got any advice other than kicking the guy?


Also, based on his feedback I decided to ditch the mishap table and change the result of a TPK to just a flat "Lose half the treasure you have acquired so far in the session," which is a bit less fun and less immersive, but a lot more fair and less punishing imo.





*Apologies if anyone reading this was part of the online game that I left in the lurch. The game was fine, but certain real life conflicts came to a head mid session.

Darth Ultron
2018-12-03, 11:13 PM
I guess you can kick out B because he does not like the character you made for him, and you did single him out to be targeted and screwed over. Really, it's all your fault...but if you want to blame the player, then sure, go ahead.

So to break it down:

1.Making the Player Character. Well, this is just about always a bad idea: except for very, very, very new players or a player that asks you to do it for some reason. The blanket unfairness of ''well I'm making a character for Bob and Joe, so I must make one for you too" just makes no sense. Why not let the experienced player make their own character?

2.The Fate worse then Death. This is a big one. Just kill the characters and be done with it. This is really a horrible idea.

And I'm a meat grinder killer DM: at the end of a typical adventure I expect each character to be beaten to with in a HP of death and loose a lot of stuff (think John Mclaine at the end of Die Hard). But my players at least have an out: Character Death. Should things get ''too" bad...likely the character will die: the end. But you take the worst step possible of ''forever life", but add on ''forever horror" too.

3.I believe in the ''overwhelming encounter", but maybe more like 20%. But then I also give the players a chance to avoid or run from such encounters. It really sounds like you did a railroad of ''well I rolled a bad encounter so it must happen: you guys loose".

4.The random stuff sure is annoying, but I get you ''like" it. Though it does not really make sense as to why you like to have ''random surprise stuff" happen that is ''totally out of your control....sort of:

5.Wow, the BIG one. Your....vagueness..about controlling the game. Sure the random stuff is great, and you can go sit with the players AS a player and go ''wow, look at the random thing that happened totally beyond my control!" For a couple seconds....and then you move back over to be GM and just do whatever you want on a whim. And..oddly...''whatever you want on a whim" are a LOT of bad plays.

Lets take the healer. Ok...so it random gets picked..and you go ''wow" as a player. Ok...that part is great. But then your like ''oh, well on a whim using my GM powers I'll just say the healer can help character #3...and screw everyone else." Um...what? Seems like a bad move.

I guess you say ''oh the healer just randomly happened" and you had ''no control" over it.....and, ok, even IF that is true.....well you had control over everything After that, right? So why did you ''suddenly" decide the healer could help only one character? Why did you not decide...well...ANYTHING else?

Ok, lets take the player that ''looses an item". So did they randomly roll for what they loose? Did the player pick? Or did YOU the GM pick? Well...I bet it was you, right? "Suddenly" deciding, yet again, to make a bad movie. And, yet again, saying ''oh the pick of 'lose an item' was random and I had not control over it'.....you know until you DID have control over it.

My basic point here is you add random things you are ''powerless" against to the game...for reasons. And then like a second later you just go back to being an typical all powerful GM. So why even have the pretense of ''random stuff you are powerless to stop"? Your not fooling yourself(right?). I GUESS you could be fooling the players....but why would you even want too? Exactly how is the game enhanced by you pretending things are random?

(ahhh)

Ok, now you might know I'm a very harsh up front unfair killer DM. But..oddly, lets compare:

1.You specifically target your players with things(but pretend they are random)

2.I don't target good players, at all. Yes, very, very, very, very bad things can and often do happen to characters in my games. But it's almost never by ''DM Whim". It's just about always by character actions..IN the game. And players often get a more then fair warning and a chance to at least lessen the effects. Unlike your ''you must pick a random effect and then I will alter the game reality to target you and mess with you"style.

Talakeal
2018-12-03, 11:38 PM
Stuff.

Well, I have been away from the forum for a good six months, but its good to see that you haven't changed Darth.


But I will try and respond to you in good faith with a few clarifications:

But, in short, when I say "random" I mean random, the results and what they did were all rolled in the open on tables that I had written up before the campaign even began.

The whole purpose of the healer was so that players would have a way to fix permanent injuries. I am not sure how only one player having such an injury at the time is "screwing" the rest of the party, indeed wouldn't it have been a much worse screw job for me to suddenly say the healer CAN'T help the one injured player?

When I say a RANDOM item I mean a RANDOM item, determined by die roll and with every item listed on the character sheet having an equal chance to be rolled.

Also, not sure where you are getting a "fate worse than death," there is nothing on the mishap table that can't be fixed relatively easily, and if for some reason something did happen to a character that made them too unpleasant to play, there is nothing stopping them from retiring the character.

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by "But then I also give the players a chance to avoid or run from such encounters. It really sounds like you did a railroad of ''well I rolled a bad encounter so it must happen: you guys loose""? Like, do you have them spot the monster on the horizon before it sees them so they can choose not to go near? How do you "choose not to encounter something?"


As for why I am including so many random elements in the game, its mostly because I am trying out different things. I have been reading a lot of gaming blogs in my year away from gaming, and there have been a lot of interesting ideas that I wanted to try, and a lot of the OSR blogs make a big deal out of having robust random encounter tables and the like.

Darth Ultron
2018-12-04, 12:05 AM
The whole purpose of the healer was so that players would have a way to fix permanent injuries. I am not sure how only one player having such an injury at the time is "screwing" the rest of the party, indeed wouldn't it have been a much worse screw job for me to suddenly say the healer CAN'T help the one injured player?

Having a healer guy to fix things that the DM arranged to go wrong...is, well, ok. Some players do like when the DM ''surprise" targets their character ...and then ''surprise" fixes their character.

Still the problem is more the random. You set it up that there is a healer...but then only 'pop' them out of thin air at random. See, it's much better for a DM to improv anything they want out of thin air at random.

I wonder, was there a ''guy that fixes broken or lost stuff" too?



Also, not sure where you are getting a "fate worse than death," there is nothing on the mishap table that can't be fixed relatively easily, and if for some reason something did happen to a character that made them too unpleasant to play, there is nothing stopping them from retiring the character.

To have endless negative things happen to a character is worse then death. Look at it this way: in my game the dragon just kills the characters. In your game they get separated and get some sort of negative hing to happen. Over and over and over and over again. Player Bob in my game is on character #3, but Bob in your game has a wounded, cursed, poisoned, and whatever character as they got ''knocked out" a couple times.




Out of curiosity, what do you mean by "But then I also give the players a chance to avoid or run from such encounters. It really sounds like you did a railroad of ''well I rolled a bad encounter so it must happen: you guys loose""? Like, do you have them spot the monster on the horizon before it sees them so they can choose not to go near? How do you "choose not to encounter something?"

Yes. For the most part, powerful creatures don't just 'pop' out of thin air. Players in my games will get fair warning that ''Zarl's Blink Dog" is a vicious fighter that killed a fire giant with ''one paw" or they see a half red dragon minotaur with a great hammer and ''get" the idea that they should not fight.



As for why I am including so many random elements in the game, its mostly because I am trying out different things. I have been reading a lot of gaming blogs in my year away from gaming, and there have been a lot of interesting ideas that I wanted to try, and a lot of the OSR blogs make a big deal out of having robust random encounter tables and the like.

Random events and random encounter tables are two different things though.

Still, though, it's the part that comes AFTER the random.

1.Random game. You roll a ''1'', so an obliteration monster shows up. The PCs loose, and get all your bad ''worse then just death'' effects.

2.The DM controlled game. Well, no obliteration monster would ever show up...unless the DM wanted it too. And if the DM did so, characters would likely die.

3.Somewhere in the middle: So, the DM rolls a ''1'' and is ''stuck" with the obliteration monster...but still has control of the game. So the DM makes the monster badly wounded....or distracted...or have a weak spot....or anything else OTHER then ''sorry players you loose and have to take on all these special hardships for your character."

Quertus
2018-12-04, 12:15 AM
Welcome back!

OK, let me play DU's advocate here.

T, your system greatly removes agency from the PCs. Oh, look, we rolled a TPK, nothing we can do about that. Oh, look, we rolled various levels of "punishment" for rolling a TPK. Oh, look, we rolled "fix one PC", nothing we can otherwise do to fix his - or anytime else's - conditions. It's "random SoS - the game".

At least, that's what I think DU's advocate should say that DU is trying to get across.

I'll try to post my own opinion later.

Talakeal
2018-12-04, 12:19 AM
I wonder, was there a ''guy that fixes broken or lost stuff" too?



To have endless negative things happen to a character is worse then death. Look at it this way: in my game the dragon just kills the characters. In your game they get separated and get some sort of negative hing to happen. Over and over and over and over again. Player Bob in my game is on character #3, but Bob in your game has a wounded, cursed, poisoned, and whatever character as they got ''knocked out" a couple times.."


Yes, the character who fixes broken or lost stuff for a small fee is called a merchant, they are rather common.

If by "over and over and over and over and over again" you mean once in seven sessions, then yes that is correct. But even so, I would much rather play a character that got wounded, cursed, and poisoned than have three different characters killed in the same amount of time and started over the game from scratch three times.

Talakeal
2018-12-04, 12:24 AM
Welcome back!

OK, let me play DU's advocate here.

T, your system greatly removes agency from the PCs. Oh, look, we rolled a TPK, nothing we can do about that. Oh, look, we rolled "fix one PC", nothing we can otherwise do to fix his - or anytime else's - conditions. It's "random SoS - the game".

At least, that's what I think DU's advocate should say that DU is trying to get across.

I'll try to post my own opinion later.

Hey Quertus!

To clarify, its not "fix one PC" its an npc who can, for a small cost, fix permanent injuries. It is not a one time thing, now that they know about him they can come back any time any PC suffers a permanent injury. It was just a cooincidence that they happened to discover the npc so soon after one of the PCs suffered a permanent injury.

Honestly I dont have a lot of experiance with wandering monster tables, but isnt encountering a strong enemy at a bad time something that can happen almost universally in games that use random encounters?

Arbane
2018-12-04, 12:33 AM
You don't understand - in DU's games, death is the PCs' only escape from suffering. :smallamused:


Honestly I dont have a lot of experiance with wandering monster tables, but isnt encountering a strong enemy at a bad time something that can happen almost universally in games that use random encounters?

Yes. That's when the PCs get reminded that the true God Stat is 'movement speed'.

Semi-seriously, if you're going to put in unfightable encounters, you also need to make sure PCs have a chance to hide, run away, make friends, or beg for their worthless lives.

Quertus
2018-12-04, 01:38 AM
Hey Quertus!

To clarify, its not "fix one PC" its an npc who can, for a small cost, fix permanent injuries. It is not a one time thing, now that they know about him they can come back any time any PC suffers a permanent injury. It was just a cooincidence that they happened to discover the npc so soon after one of the PCs suffered a permanent injury.

Honestly I dont have a lot of experiance with wandering monster tables, but isnt encountering a strong enemy at a bad time something that can happen almost universally in games that use random encounters?

Well, as I said, that was what my version of "Google Translate" guessed was the best "DU to Playground Collective" translation.

My Simulationist mindset is glad that the healer doesn't randomly disappear after 1d4+1 encounters.

IME, most random encounters are rather weak, comparatively. The "big" fights are usually planned boss fights - even more so nowadays, where players these days chafe at the notion of a "random", "ignoble" or "dramatically inappropriate" death.

I'm not a fan of modern gaming trends.

IMO, random encounters should be truly random - anything from "cat in a tree" to "rupture in space/time". My players once encountered "the BBEG" as a random encounter.


Semi-seriously, if you're going to put in unfightable encounters, you also need to make sure PCs have a chance to hide, run away, make friends, or beg for their worthless lives.

So, this is more in the direction of my opinion. Kind of.

T, if I read this right, you care about continuity and character death. You've realized that, for your playstyle, death and TPKs are problematic. Thus, you have created your own system that removes them from the equation.

Now, Arbane has presented a perfectly reasonable set of alternatives. Myself, I'm a ****, I say **** that, so long the system gives them options, it's entirely on the players to have a plan; otherwise, the PCs die. If they care about continuity, if death is an issue for them, well, that's on them. (Important takeaway: there are other play styles.)

Anyway, point is, you created alternate consequences other than death, so that you can keep continuity*, and the players don't have to create new characters.

Thing is, for many players, DU is correct - you have, instead, given them a fate worse than death. In fact, this has come up in threads in your absence**.

Barring forced to play a lame, crippled, naked, defiled character is much more torturous to many players than a clean death.

Also, being denied a realistic death, and instead taking on arbitrary "consequences" is much worse for me than a well-deserved, realistic death. (And I'm only in it for the role-playing, and prefer to run a character from level 1-50+, so character retention is kinda important to me - but realism / verisimilitude / world consistency is trump over even that***)

But most of that is seemingly irrelevant. As is - even if it were accurate - my earlier guess at DU's underlying thrust.

Seemingly.

See, the thing is, you've got an upset player. And you've got no idea why. Further, from your description, it feels like the player has no idea why, because, from your description, his stated reasons don't make any sense.

So, there are two possibilities that i can see. OK, three. One, maybe you just can't see what's going on, and your description is all wrong. I don't think that's the case, but it is possible.

Two, you've violated some unspoken and unevaluated assumption and requirement for this player - enforced game balance, actions having just consequences, verisimilitude, character growth and advancement, whatever - and, because they've never had to vocalize this complaint before, they lack the ability to comprehend and express what's actually bothering them.

Or, third, maybe you're in Bizarro world.

Going under the premise that it's probably #2, I figure it's best if I introduce you to as many sacred cows that you might be slaughtering as possible. Because your system is killing quite a few.

Question is, which of these sacred cows actually matters to the player in question?

Corollary: is the player sane, or is what he said actually what's bothering him?

* I keep using that word. It might not mean what I think it means.
** Don't ask me which ones - I'm too senile to remember. You're lucky that I remember that this line of conversation is familiar.
*** I guess that's the kind of questions Smallville asks of its players all the time, no? "Which of these things that you care about, do you care about more in this situation?"

Kaptin Keen
2018-12-04, 02:34 AM
I've played with GM made pc's many times. That's not a problem, it sometimes works way better than with players making their own. The question of one player losing all his wealth is silly. It's not gone, it's still out there - he just has to go out and get it back. He should be highly motivated. Don't get mad, get even, sort of thing. Furthermore, if he hadn't bought the armor, he'd just have lost more gold in the encounter.

Now, if one player really doesn't like the character he was handed - just let him make his own. Or sit down and make another one with him.

And maybe just, overall, sit down with the players and explain that nothing is final, roll with the punches and make the best of it.

Pelle
2018-12-04, 03:23 AM
The random everything approach is ok with if everyone likes it, and can laugh off and enjoy it when a string of unlucky events transpire. Some players don't find that fun though, and that is quite understandable. Sounds like you didn't get buy-in to that. So if you and the majority of the group like it, just decide if you value the randomness over this player. If not, I would suggest just filtering the outcomes of the rolls a bit to avoid too unenjoyable things from happening. And if you have to do that a lot, there's something wrong with your tables...

Koo Rehtorb
2018-12-04, 04:04 AM
Well, everything about this game sounds awful to me. If it's working for everyone else though then stick with it and I imagine this guy will find better things to do with his time soon enough.

Anonymouswizard
2018-12-04, 04:52 AM
Okay, my thoughts:

The consequences table should have results that are all roughly equal in level of 'bad thing happen to you', mainly to avoid situations where one player feels singled out for punishment. Also, for classification, I'm assuming that the players get the opportunity to see the table to know that you aren't fudging. But if the other four players are fine with it then there's no two need to change it.

The fact your player expressed a desire for more control over their character is fine, as is your agreement. Their demands are a bit out of line (I'm assuming they have roughly average Constitution), but I'd definitely see nothing wrong with allowing then to drop a few points from Strength and/or Dexterity to raise a couple of other stats, or allowing him to shuffle his spells known (once). Especially as I get the idea that sorcerers in your system are fairly SAD (at list compared to my system where casters care about three stats*) I wouldn't allow him to do it to the extent he wants unless he can tell me a) how a character with such wildly unbalanced stats exists, and b) why on earth a (rather severely) physically disabled person is doing a very physically demanding job.

All in all, I can't actually see anything you've done wrong. Some things that wouldn't fit in my style, but nothing wrong.

My only suggestion is maybe allowing players to rebuild their characters using the system's rules, making sure players have a copy of the 'harm table' they can keep so they know you stent changing it, and potentially retconning the healng so it takes time until the PC is at full capacity, but I'm iffy on that.

Oh, and make sure the PCs have a chance to get their stuff back. 'You dropped your armour/purse to flee better, but still know roughly where it is, and should be able to find it or get a chance to track whoever took it', that sort of thing.

* Empathy determines Spirit Points, Intellect governs casting rolls, and Presence increases the spell's power.

Talakeal
2018-12-04, 08:48 AM
The consequences table should have results that are all roughly equal in level of 'bad thing happen to you', mainly to avoid situations where one player feels singled out for punishment. Also, for classification, I'm assuming that the players get the opportunity to see the table to know that you aren't fudging. But if the other four players are fine with it then there's no two need to change it.

The fact your player expressed a desire for more control over their character is fine, as is your agreement. Their demands are a bit out of line (I'm assuming they have roughly average Constitution), but I'd definitely see nothing wrong with allowing then to drop a few points from Strength and/or Dexterity to raise a couple of other stats, or allowing him to shuffle his spells known (once). Especially as I get the idea that sorcerers in your system are fairly SAD (at list compared to my system where casters care about three stats*) I wouldn't allow him to do it to the extent he wants unless he can tell me a) how a character with such wildly unbalanced stats exists, and b) why on earth a (rather severely) physically disabled person is doing a very physically demanding job.

My only suggestion is maybe allowing players to rebuild their characters using the system's rules, making sure players have a copy of the 'harm table' they can keep so they know you stent changing it, and potentially retconning the healng so it takes time until the PC is at full capacity, but I'm iffy on that.


The players can absolutely see the mishap table, I gave every player a printed copy of the campaign rules and it is included.

Likewise the players can absolutely change their characters. The problem is the player in question wants to play a ridiculously min-maxxed character. They are objecting to not being allowed to have a character with the equivalent of stats above 16 or below 8 (which iirc is the default situation in 5E). They are free to raise their stats to 18 over the course of play, just not start with them.

Honestly if I were to approve the proposed change (dropping STR and DEX to 3 to raise CHA and CON to 18) I foresee it only creating future conflict as they will likely get KOed before they even get to act in a lot of combats with such a pitiful initiative and AC painting a giant bullseye on them.

Plus, this is a hex-crawl, having a three strength means that they won't be able to carry their own supplies, thus leeching off someone else and making the group weaker as a whole, and they won't be able to carry any of the treasure they find back to town.

For the record, how I generated stats was I asked them to describe their character in each area with one of the following adjectives: Poor, Ordinary, Good, Exceptional, or Incredible, then for each poor gave them an 8, each ordinary a 10, each good a 12, each exceptional a 14, and each incredible a 16.


Well, everything about this game sounds awful to me. If it's working for everyone else though then stick with it and I imagine this guy will find better things to do with his time soon enough.

Care to elaborate? "Everything is horrible" is a bit too general and hyperbolic to be useful.

Random encounter tables and hex-crawls are a specific style of play, but not an uncommon one.

I agree that the DM handling the mechanics of char-gen is a bit of a red flag, but I told the players they could make whatever changes they wanted, I was just handling the crunch for the newbies.

No player death is a bit unusual, but imo its really just cutting out the illusion. I mostly play White Wolf, where it is really hard to actually die and I can't recall a player death in all the years of playing, and D&D, where death is just a minor setback past low levels as raise dead becomes cheap and plentiful.

Is there something wrong with getting to pick up random rumors? I think its a fun and flavorful way to give the players hints and adventure hooks without railroading so they aren't completely lost, but I guess that it might be immersion breaking to pull text out of an envelope rather than actually playing out conversations with random NPCs (although in the case of the disgruntled player I think that is the last thing he wanted based on his reaction to the conversation with the healer).


I've played with GM made pc's many times. That's not a problem, it sometimes works way better than with players making their own. The question of one player losing all his wealth is silly. It's not gone, it's still out there - he just has to go out and get it back. He should be highly motivated. Don't get mad, get even, sort of thing. Furthermore, if he hadn't bought the armor, he'd just have lost more gold in the encounter.

Now, if one player really doesn't like the character he was handed - just let him make his own. Or sit down and make another one with him.

To clarify, I didn't actually create the characters, I merely handled the mechanical aspects of it based on the players fluff description of the character.

Its not that he doesn't like the character, its just that it isn't min-maxxed enough for him.

Thinker
2018-12-04, 10:52 AM
Welcome back. I often enjoyed reading your posts, even if I never spent as much time contributing to the discussion. I hope you are enjoying your new job and your new place!

Darth Ultron can be abrasive, but he's not necessarily wrong. He sees that there were a lot of points where you're absolving yourself of blame because of how the dice landed whereas another GM might have decided that the dice rolls kind of sucked and changed the outcome. Relying on luck of the draw is just fine for some styles of play and your group may even prefer that, but it's definitely not for everyone. That said, here's my advice on the situation.

Compulsive gambler: What do players get out of playing to their character's flaws? Is there an XP bonus, action point granted, or some other benefit? I kind of agree with Player B that using the party's money is crappy and it seems you agreed with that as well. Though, from a GM perspective, I would have let the players sort that out - it seems like an opportunity for drama. I like to play with character bonds that grant XP if they're explored so I'd probably allow a bond where Player B is mistrustful of Player A's use of party resources. It was nice of Player B to give that armor to Player A though.
Random encounter: I think random encounters can be fun, too. I don't like having a giant table of them though where anything can and will happen, especially if there's a plot being driven. My main goals with random encounters are to make the game feel alive by showing the players that there's more going on than what they're worried about and to create tension for the players. To that end, I make my random encounters as a series of related, escalating events. For example, let's say that I was running a game about a group who was searching some ruins for an artifact that can seal away the Darkness, but the surrounding area was well-known to be a hot-bed of goblin activity. I might put together an encounter track like this:
Encounter 1: The party comes across a raided caravan with evidence of goblin activity, a pair of severely-injured survivors, and a bunch missing hostages.
Encounter 2: The party finds a sacrificed priest who matches a description of one of the hostages provided by the injured survivors. There is a single goblin desecrating the priest's body and a warg keeping watch.
Encounter 3: The party comes across a band of goblins with hostages from the ruined caravan. The goblins are mistrustful of the tall-folk and their reaction might be based on how the party handled Encounter 2 - if they let the goblin live, they might be more friendly, but if they attacked and the goblin or warg escaped, maybe the goblins attack on sight!
Encounter 4: The party stumbles across the local raider chief leading her band of villains to their next encampment. Again, depending on what happened at Encounter 3, there might be hostages here or there might not be; she might be friendly or she might be hostile.

Depending on the size and scope of play, I'll have multiple such lists. One might be for the goblins, another might be for the Knights Who Say Ni on their endless quest for shrubberies. I expect approximately one random encounter per in-game hour or more if the party is being very noisy or careless. When my roll indicates that there is a random encounter, I choose which of my encounter tracks I want to throw at the party. This one might be Encounter 3 for the goblins or I might choose Encounter 2 for the Knights. The point is to make the encounter feel interconnected. The other important part about these encounters is that the players mostly opt-in to dealing with them. They might kill some goblins, but they might not rescue the hostages unless they really care about them. And that's fine. Then, they see that there are stories going on in the world that don't involve them. They might also decide that they want to pursue these random encounters as a side quest. That's fine, too.

This form of random encounter also lends itself to future quests - maybe there was a noble child among the hostages, but now the goblins have been emboldened by their success so there's more of them. Maybe the Knights have found that the local forest is perfect for shrubberies and are setting up shop, much to the dismay of the Duke.

Character Death: I prefer to have character death, but there's nothing wrong with avoiding it. Depending on how you're focusing the game, bringing in new characters can absolutely be disruptive. Nothing wrong with the idea of KO's and scattered parties that regroup back in civilization.

Mishap Table:The mishap table is a bit of a red flag. It doesn't seem well-balanced if two players can ignore its effects while another is debilitated, another loses a valuable item, and one loses all of their cash. That wouldn't seem fair to me, either. Permanent or semi-permanent set-backs feel bad for the players, but cash is only potential power. It seems like you realized that as well by changing it to loss of half of cash, which should be more palatable.

You might need more levers to pull that the players care about than only what are on their character sheets though. You can do this by creating services that they rely on in-town. Your healer would be a perfect example of that. Let's say you can get debilities from regular combat - losing 20 HP results in a punctured lung or something, but the only way to fully recover from that is to seek out the healer. Now, after a TPK, the players discover that the healer has been kidnapped while they were recovering and can't help them until he is found. Or, the blacksmith can't repair their weapons and until the party can find out why he hasn't received any iron shipments in the last month. If you're using some form of stress, you can have the character's vices that are used to deal with that stress unavailable as well.

What happened with your TPK: You gave Player C a way out from his issue before the session ended. That left only two people affected by the TPK. One of those two only lost something that was given to him as a form of charity and, presumably, had other items already and maybe even more coin from whatever adventuring took place. So, maybe a net neutral on the session for four players. Now, you have one player who lost all of his cash, which is potential power. Even though this is entirely determined by the dice, you could have stepped in to stop the dice from crapping on Player B. The job of the GM is not only to interpret dice-rolls and lookup effects on a table. We could just use a computer for that. It is also to act as a referee to ensure that the rules are being fairly applied to everyone and that everyone is having fun.

This is even more true since players are locked into their characters since they've lost some agency. Player B was already probably checked-out by the time the thirty minute dialog with the healer came around since he felt that the game was against him. I can't say I blame him for that. In most games, if we had a TPK, we wouldn't spend thirty minutes talking to an unimportant NPC. We'd spend that time making new characters instead. Even if my new character is broke, so is everyone else's. Plus, I can decide what my new character is and isn't good at.

Character Creation:Character creation is an issue separate from the rest of your discussion. The min-max to absurdity is disruptive to the game and you're right to tell him so. You can put limits on character creation whether you create the character for the player or not. I don't think you should kick him for wanting to reduce his strength and dexterity ridiculously low. Just say no, tell him how he is allowed to adjust his character, and if he's disruptive about it later, consider other ways of dealing with him.

Segev
2018-12-04, 11:17 AM
Player B is not being a problem player, inherently. I think I'd feel as annoyed as he does in this situation: he tried to do something nice, and it got ruined. At the same time, he was, himself, ruined. Bad things happened to other players that got fixed, but he's screwed. Player A may actually feel the same way, though Player B would have a hard time commiserating, because Player A's "bad stuff" is a net loss of nothing compared to what would have happened if Player B hadn't bought him that armor. (Admittedly, Player B still would've lost the money for the armor, but...the idea here is the sense that Player B isn't allowed to do anything effective.)

One way to approach this is to suggest that the money Player B lost was taken by something you can make a side quest out of. In pursuing it, Player B can get back his lost wealth, and the party can also get a side quest's worth of loot on top of it (obviously fairly split with Player B, so he gets what he lost back and a fair share of the rest).

You can do something similar with Player A and his lost armor: what caused the loss? Can this be an adventure hook?


Another way to approach it is to simply apologize to Player B, and point out that the RNG hated him. You didn't make this stuff up responsively; the tables just worked out that way. Perhaps point out that there are opportunities to regain what he's lost, too.


One game balance mistake you may have made is if the amount of money Player B lost is less than it cost to have the permanent injury on the other player removed. That makes the permanent injury actively less bad than losing all your money. If "Man, I wish I'd fallen and broken my ankle rather than getting robbed by a pickpocket," is a rational thing to say, there's probably something "off" in your tables.

Jay R
2018-12-04, 11:23 AM
You can do something similar with Player A and his lost armor: what caused the loss? Can this be an adventure hook?

How do you "lose" armor? It's strapped on. I suggest that he fell in a lake or river, and had to remove it to avoid drowning. That means that he knows where it is. Voila - plot hook!

Quertus
2018-12-04, 12:27 PM
So, to use the hated words, you'll note that you are getting a lot of very Simulationist responses to your very Gamist system.

Do you want the world to feel "real" in that there is a very real reason why that armor and cash were lost? Do you want the players to be able to poke at that very real reason, and get their stuff back, if they put in the effort / have the luck/skills/whatever / whatever? Would you have let the players, had "C" been incapacitated, but a different random event been drawn, seek out a healer in town, because, apparently, he's been there all along?

Or do you want the game to be very "gamey", and, no, the dice randomly dictate your fate, like Chance & Community Chest in Monopoly? Nope, the cash and armor just cease to exist once you draw the "you lose these" cards? Nope, the healer doesn't exist until you draw the "Healer" card?

Talakeal
2018-12-04, 12:36 PM
So, to use the hated words, you'll note that you are getting a lot of very Simulationist responses to your very Gamist system.

Do you want the world to feel "real" in that there is a very real reason why that armor and cash were lost? Do you want the players to be able to poke at that very real reason, and get their stuff back, if they put in the effort / have the luck/skills/whatever / whatever? Would you have let the players, had "C" been incapacitated, but a different random event been drawn, seek out a healer in town, because, apparently, he's been there all along?

Or do you want the game to be very "gamey", and, no, the dice randomly dictate your fate, like Chance & Community Chest in Monopoly? Nope, the cash and armor just cease to exist once you draw the "you lose these" cards? Nope, the healer doesn't exist until you draw the "Healer" card?

I agree. Which is wierd because I am normally a pretty hard simulationist.

Its a hex crawl. The healer exists, but he isnt in town. The PCs could have stumbled upon him at any time or, if they actively were searching for such a character, have gotten the location without drawing the rumor card after some sussesful gather information checks.

Character A is an outlaw who is serving character B in exchange for forgiving some hefty gambling debts. My explanation for what happened on the table was that player A was captured by slavers while lost and alone in the wilderness. The slavers kept his armor (it was the only thing he owned of any value) and then sold him at auction. Character B then decided to buy him, but a mysterious robed figure (an adventure hook) kept driving up the price, requring character B to spend nearly all of her cash.

It is possible for them to track down the armor, although doing so probably isnt worth their time, it wasnt some ancient magical artifact or anything, just some very expensive armor bought in town, one of many. Although this is all academic because I decided to make the change to the table retroactive and let him keep his armor after all.

Quertus
2018-12-04, 01:14 PM
I agree. Which is wierd because I am normally a pretty hard simulationist.

Its a hex crawl. The healer exists, but he isnt in town. The PCs could have stumbled upon him at any time or, if they actively were searching for such a character, have gotten the location without drawing the rumor card after some sussesful gather information checks.

Character A is an outlaw who is serving character B in exchange for forgiving some hefty gambling debts. My explanation for what happened on the table was that player A was captured by slavers while lost and alone in the wilderness. The slavers kept his armor (it was the only thing he owned of any value) and then sold him at auction. Character B then decided to buy him, but a mysterious robed figure (an adventure hook) kept driving up the price, requring character B to spend nearly all of her cash.

It is possible for them to track down the armor, although doing so probably isnt worth their time, it wasnt some ancient magical artifact or anything, just some very expensive armor bought in town, one of many. Although this is all academic because I decided to make the change to the table retroactive and let him keep his armor after all.

OK, so, next sacred cow (or two (or three)) - the random "bad stuff" table.

Let me hit the dumbest bit first - these consequences aren't under the players' control, at all. For some players, this can be solved by something as simple as letting them roll on the table themselves. Honestly, with sufficient buy-in, that's all it takes. For someone like me, though, there are two larger pain points (one of which ties heavily into a sacred cow).

Now, this is a bit tricky for me to explain. What you've got is...

Random Encounter* ->* Combat* -> TPK ->* random effects*

So, everywhere I've placed a "*", that's a spot of, afaict, no player agency. Everywhere I've placed a "*", that's an illusion of player agency. So, let me break that down.

My guess is, the players have no agency over whether or what type of random encounters they have. If I'm correct, that's the first *.

I'm also guessing that, random encounter rolled, they have no real opportunity not to transition to the fight scene. If I'm correct, that's the second *.

Then, the random encounter is totally overpowered, and, as they're already not at full resources, well, they have full agency, but it is irrelevant. Thus the *. Some might call that harsh, to call their agency an illusion, because they do actually have full agency. Shrug. Limited vocabulary, gotta call it something.

This leads naturally to a TPK. Perfectly Simulationist here.

Now, then the TPK is transformed, regardless of player desires, into something else. That's the third *.

Then, there's a bunch of random outcomes that get rolled for, that they have no agency over. That's the last *.

That last one could be transformed into a *, an illusion of agency, by letting them roll the dice themselves, as I stated above.

IMO, it could be transformed into real agency by a) making the consequences skill-based, or b) giving the players a choice. Personally, I prefer both. For example, "Slavers chase you to a river. You can surrender, <consequence: lose (just one? random? really?) item>, or you can attempt to swim the river. If you attempt to swim the river, <Strength/Swim DC 15, pass -> no consequence; fail -> consequence: lose all items>".

Then, another pain point for me, personally, is, "WTF do slavers have to do with a Revenant encounter?". I prefer for consequences to flow logically from events - the random consequences table... doesn't.

I mean, sure, you try to back-fill the events to cause the consequences, and you may be good at that, but... imagine if "Explore the Dungeon" had you roll a d6, and on a "1", the consequence was, "you die". Now, the GM makes your death seem completely reasonable as you play through the Dungeon, but... would you find that style of play engaging?

I'm not a fan of engineering the past to match the future. I prefer Simulationist cause-and-effect, not effect-and-cause.

It might be clearer if I color-code the sections:

Random Encounter -> Combat -> TPK -> Random Effects

Anyway, my question for the second sacred cow is, do you really mean to be running a game with (apparently) so little player agency? If not, where would you like to add more agency? Or, more importantly - where, if anywhere, do your players most feel the lack of agency?

As I stated above, letting them roll the dice for their random consequence changes that to,

Random Encounter -> Combat -> TPK -> Random Effects

which, for some players, is enough. Others require more/different expressions of player agency.

The other sacred cow that you're butchering... dang, what was it? Ah, right - the fact that the results do not seem equivalent. It's "well, we, as a team, failed, so, therefore, you, Bob, are going to get ****ed".

Talakeal
2018-12-04, 01:38 PM
@Quertus:

Random encouner type and frequency is determined by player pace and route.

Then the players get a survival check to determine the severity of the encounter, with high checks allowing for beneficial results.

Then both sides get perception and stealth checks (modified by player pace) to see who gets the drop on who.

And the players can always decide to try and run or parley with the encounter instead of fighting. Although in this particular case its a mounted revenant, so neither of those options are particularly good ones.

The TPK represents the party being routed and scattered, fleeing wildly into the night and then regrouping in town. Player A is a known outlaw, and the town in question is one where slavery is the default punishment for most crimes, so if he is apprehended on his way back into town without any law abiding companions to vouch for him it seems perfectly logical to me that he is going to be treated like any other runaway slave.

Generally I prefer a pretty simulationist game, but in the "downtime" between adventures I tend to go with a much more gamist approach, letting the rules determine what happens and then summarizing it in the fiction. Generally this works as my players tend to get pretty bored when they are away from the action, see for example the part about the player getting mad at the other players talking to the healer for half an hour.

Pelle
2018-12-04, 02:13 PM
The players can absolutely see the mishap table, I gave every player a printed copy of the campaign rules and it is included.


Players may not realize that they don't like having a small possibility of getting a bad roll until after they do get that outcome. Before that it can be fun with tension it provides and the relief it gives as long as nothing too bad happens. If at least one player comes to understand after the fact that he don't like the chance of getting an 'uneven punishment', or that other characters may get more lucky results, you can at least consider to change how those rolls are handled. If you involve him in making the procedures it may feel more legitimate when bad outcomes occur.

geppetto
2018-12-04, 02:19 PM
I dont have a problem with random event tables or consequences myself. Though as a player or GM i would prefer death to be a possibility on said table.

The consequences should generally be even though. For instance If you can fix your broken bone X by paying 10gp and chatting for 5 minutes then you should be able to find your lost material possessions with a 10gp bribe to find out where they are and a quick 1on1 encounter or fight to get them back.

That way nobody feels too screwed over. I would also let the players roll on the table. Its silly but it will make them feel more in control.

As for min maxer, just no. Tell him a 3 STR and CON makes him severely physically disabled. He would not be able to travel all day, carry his own gear, would be riddles with allergies and constantly sick. I might let him go as low as 6, with the full understanding of what the consequences would be for someone whose weak, frail and sickly in job thats physically demanding, violent and constantly exposes the individual to exposure to bad weather, filth, foreign blood with unknown pathogens and old food.

Perhaps remind him that food poisoning and water born illnesses are very real threats in a world without refrigeration or purified water available. Especially for a person with a compromised immune system.

If he insists maybe let him go with his 3 CON. And then roleplay the joys is sneezing, coughing and the umm "bubble guts" all at once while hes trying to cast. Should be hilarious for everyone else and teach him a lesson.

Talakeal
2018-12-04, 02:39 PM
@gepetto

The players DO roll their own dice. I am not sure if
I gave the impression upthread that
I rolled for them, but that is not the case.

Also, its dex he wants to drop, not con, if that makes any difference. But in my experiance trying to pile on additional consequences just leads to player resentment.

geppetto
2018-12-04, 03:12 PM
@gepetto

The players DO roll their own dice. I am not sure if
I gave the impression upthread that
I rolled for them, but that is not the case.

Also, its dex he wants to drop, not con, if that makes any difference. But in my experiance trying to pile on additional consequences just leads to player resentment.

Dex can be even more fun. A 3 Dex is basically a toddler or falling down drunk, constantly tipping over. If he doesnt like it? Oh well. Tough. After a little bit of fun at his expense let him change it back to something reasonable. Remind him that handicaps dont really make you handicapable and he cant have his cake and eat it too. If that provokes a tantrum then tell him to grow up or bounce.

Or to be gentle you could just give a game example. I'm not sure about your system but in previous editions a 3 score has the same numeric penalty as being BLIND. So you can remind him that to be fair you will have to enforce penalties just as much of a hindrance to his character as being completely, permanently unable to see would be. And that should bring home the stupidity of what he's asking to do.

You cant accommodate min maxing idiots. They're just trying to pull off a scam that video games have taught them should work. You can train them to be good players, but only by enforcing the sort of realistic consequences that differentiate actual table top rpgs from video games.

Quertus
2018-12-06, 01:30 PM
Dex can be even more fun. A 3 Dex is basically a toddler or falling down drunk, constantly tipping over. If he doesnt like it? Oh well. Tough. After a little bit of fun at his expense let him change it back to something reasonable. Remind him that handicaps dont really make you handicapable and he cant have his cake and eat it too. If that provokes a tantrum then tell him to grow up or bounce.

Or to be gentle you could just give a game example. I'm not sure about your system but in previous editions a 3 score has the same numeric penalty as being BLIND. So you can remind him that to be fair you will have to enforce penalties just as much of a hindrance to his character as being completely, permanently unable to see would be. And that should bring home the stupidity of what he's asking to do.

You cant accommodate min maxing idiots. They're just trying to pull off a scam that video games have taught them should work. You can train them to be good players, but only by enforcing the sort of realistic consequences that differentiate actual table top rpgs from video games.

That's OK - with my 18 int, I've invented featherweight padding and gyroscopic balancing systems to compensate for my bad Dex.

Enforcing realistic consequences cuts both ways. Better, IMO, to stick to RAW.

geppetto
2018-12-07, 01:15 PM
That's OK - with my 18 int, I've invented featherweight padding and gyroscopic balancing systems to compensate for my bad Dex.

Enforcing realistic consequences cuts both ways. Better, IMO, to stick to RAW.

No you dont. Thats not intelligence, its craft, its up to the GM what if anything you can invent and thats absurd, its not how hand eye coordination works.

I'd be happy to let you try though. Mister fumble fingers can make a dex check for all 10 digits and both hands to see what he slips and chops off with the power tools in his workshop while vainly trying to invent something to make himself less clumsy.

Quertus
2018-12-07, 03:04 PM
No you dont. Thats not intelligence, its craft, its up to the GM what if anything you can invent and thats absurd, its not how hand eye coordination works.

I'd be happy to let you try though. Mister fumble fingers can make a dex check for all 10 digits and both hands to see what he slips and chops off with the power tools in his workshop while vainly trying to invent something to make himself less clumsy.

Why do people always assume that inventing things involves crafting it yourself?

Khedrac
2018-12-07, 05:36 PM
Why do people always assume that inventing things involves crafting it yourself?

Because a lot of clever ideas can be "invented" by drawing them but won't actually work when made - take a look at a lot of Leonardo da Vinci's inventions.

You can propose a gyroscopic balancing system, but in a world without relatively modern tech making one is probably a lot more difficult that you might think so being able to get a functioning one made is a completely different problem. With pre-industrial technology quite a lot of phyics tricks will work at the small model scale but cannot be made at a size suitable for practical use.

Hence - just coming up with the idea doesn't get you anything built.

Luccan
2018-12-08, 01:52 PM
I still agree with Quertus's general point. Making life harder for your player as a punishment for their impudence and daring to question your holy law isn't the way to solve it. Having a 3 Dex sucks, let that be its own punishment if you can't work something else out.

King of Nowhere
2018-12-08, 02:31 PM
Besides what everyone else said, I suggest talking with the player to make sure he understands he is the victim of bad dice rolls, which is something that can happen to anyone. And try to make it up for it later, by giving chances to recover what he lost.
And make sure the player knows he can expect something good to happen.

I've recently had a similar problem myself, and it seems to have worked.

Florian
2018-12-09, 08:51 AM
@Talakeal:

Some things here strike me as a bit odd.

Ok, normally, you use a random encounter table as part of a hex crawl with a simulations mindset, meaning that you model the contents of the tables around the environment that you want to populate by using the table. For example, when you have a rough idea that the mountain range is orc and giant territory, that, along the other creatures and hazards, is your starting point for the table. That should be rather independent of the level and EXP values (google Gygaxian Naturalism).

A hex crawl is more based around exploration than it is around combat. Player agency and options are the key here. So the second important part is the environment table, to help figure out environmental effects, starting positions, visions, initial reactions and so on. Unless the encounter is hidden or they fail to spot it, that gives the players the chance to decide on how they want to handle it, from fleeing, sneaking around it, trying to tackle it head on or prepare an ambush for it.

This also includes the agency to miscalculate, get in over their heads and fail. You should not try to shield your players from the consequences of their choices (unless you try for a fail forward approach)

I generally advise against total randomization of the content when it comes to exploration-based games. It´s always preferable to install some fixed and known "hubs" with known merchants, traders, inns, and magical services like healing or de-cursing. It´s also preferable to install minor and major landmarks of the wilderness beforehand and spread at least some fixed knowledge about that stuff around the "hubs".

As for your player: I assume that you have created all pregens along the same parameters, so same point buy, same min and max attributes and such? I will tell this to the player straight and point out that you refuse his request to rebuild because that kind of min-maxing is pretty unfair towards your other two players.

SirBellias
2018-12-09, 12:35 PM
Well, this is the type of game I enjoy, give or take, so I'm looking at this in a fairly favorable light.

While the upset player is a victim of poor dice rolls, it should be said that the dice rolls don't actually have to dictate anything at your table. Generally when I run a hexcrawl with random encounters, my tables aren't all that large to offer a more specialized set of events and encounters for the given area, and my players have gotten used to the fact that things the look like combat will be very hard to deal with in a straight fight.

And if I don't think a result I rolled fits the ark of the game, I just pick a different one or roll again. It's obvious to my players when I do this, and it usually means something interesting for them, so they don't mind.

In your case it seems like you value the character's lives quite a bit. Which is admirable, in a way, but if all they lose from getting gunned down by a revenant is their gold, then I'd be very hard pressed to explain why. In my hexcrawls I typically give the characters a chance to pick up something debilitating and permanent or go into normal death saves twice before it goes to death saves/instant death. This way, they have a better chance of living through the fight (except on TPK's), and they have a new sidequest if they want to deal with their problems.

This whole mechanic is explained in detail before the game, and is the end of much trial and error between me and another GM friend, so I think we hit a good balance of Murder/Worse Than Murder for any given terrifying encounter.

I also usually don't take away gold or items, mostly because I assume they aren't carrying all the money they own on their person and that there's not a good way of doing so that can't be either overlooked or overreacted to. Surprisingly, people tend to have a more steady reaction to permanent/ongoing character maladies/issues than material loss.

For the minmaxing bit, was there any option that could conceivably give them more optimized scores that other people had access to? If so, let him and watch him perish due to his inability to understand what strength and dexterity are for. If not, then no, he's not special.

And for the healer, adding a permanent fixture to the world/town they're in if perfectly fine. It would have been better if they had half an idea they were there BEFORE the one thing they can help with, as I can see someone thinking it was a bit cheap. But there's no helping that one, I guess, and if they're there going forward (until they're compromised by their own story) then I don't see a reason to be too upset.

Talakeal
2018-12-09, 01:17 PM
@Talakeal:

Some things here strike me as a bit odd.

Ok, normally, you use a random encounter table as part of a hex crawl with a simulations mindset, meaning that you model the contents of the tables around the environment that you want to populate by using the table. For example, when you have a rough idea that the mountain range is orc and giant territory, that, along the other creatures and hazards, is your starting point for the table. That should be rather independent of the level and EXP values (google Gygaxian Naturalism).

A hex crawl is more based around exploration than it is around combat. Player agency and options are the key here. So the second important part is the environment table, to help figure out environmental effects, starting positions, visions, initial reactions and so on. Unless the encounter is hidden or they fail to spot it, that gives the players the chance to decide on how they want to handle it, from fleeing, sneaking around it, trying to tackle it head on or prepare an ambush for it.

This also includes the agency to miscalculate, get in over their heads and fail. You should not try to shield your players from the consequences of their choices (unless you try for a fail forward approach)

I generally advise against total randomization of the content when it comes to exploration-based games. It´s always preferable to install some fixed and known "hubs" with known merchants, traders, inns, and magical services like healing or de-cursing. It´s also preferable to install minor and major landmarks of the wilderness beforehand and spread at least some fixed knowledge about that stuff around the "hubs".

As for your player: I assume that you have created all pregens along the same parameters, so same point buy, same min and max attributes and such? I will tell this to the player straight and point out that you refuse his request to rebuild because that kind of min-maxing is pretty unfair towards your other two players.

That is all exactly how I do it.

Yes, all of the pregens were created using the same parameters. It seems like the problem with the system the player had (aside from the emotional impact of the DM acting as a middle man between him and the numbers) was that the system didn't allow players to start with extremely high or extremely low stats.

SirBellias
2018-12-09, 01:45 PM
Yes, all of the pregens were created using the same parameters. It seems like the problem with the system the player had (aside from the emotional impact of the DM acting as a middle man between him and the numbers) was that the system didn't allow players to start with extremely high or extremely low stats.

Well, boo hoo for them. You've got a decent system going. It may have some things that need to be tweaked, but if no one else has an issue with that part, that's not one of them.

Florian
2018-12-09, 01:53 PM
That is all exactly how I do it.

Yes, all of the pregens were created using the same parameters. It seems like the problem with the system the player had (aside from the emotional impact of the DM acting as a middle man between him and the numbers) was that the system didn't allow players to start with extremely high or extremely low stats.

I´m not so sure yet.

See, a problem with contemporary gaming culture is that players often haven't learned to deal with loss or setback, even if they are just a temporary thing. We have some of these in the scenario you described. A common reaction is to try and either reduce the ante or hedge your bets to the point that you have the right "get out of jail free card" in hand when it matters, despite what the ability to do so will cost you, you'll find other ways around to shore up that weakness.

I find the actual choices telling: Raising CON for more staying power and CHA for more magical options, or rather, depending on the system, solutions.

You're already playing for a month now, so multiple sessions, a review of situations that already have gone "wrong" for that particular player would be interesting and quite telling. It would also be not uninteresting to ask that particular place whether he has the concrete feeling that the odds are stacked against him.

Quertus
2018-12-09, 07:38 PM
That is all exactly how I do it.

Yes, all of the pregens were created using the same parameters. It seems like the problem with the system the player had (aside from the emotional impact of the DM acting as a middle man between him and the numbers) was that the system didn't allow players to start with extremely high or extremely low stats.

So, does the player have a reason to feel that the NPCs are using more "favorable" rules, especially so that the GM's pet NPC can be "better" than them?

Because, really, that's what I hear when someone says the PCs can't start with an "18" in a D&D-style game.

"Boring samey" is what I hear when someone says no stats under 8. But, then, that's point buy for you. I cut my teeth on rolled stats.

Really, there's but so many character concepts that need stats below an 8. And I doubt that the player in question really has a concept (beyond min-maxing) that actually requires a 3 in both Strength and Dex.

Talakeal
2018-12-09, 08:54 PM
So, does the player have a reason to feel that the NPCs are using more "favorable" rules, especially so that the GM's pet NPC can be "better" than them?

Because, really, that's what I hear when someone says the PCs can't start with an "18" in a D&D-style game.

"Boring samey" is what I hear when someone says no stats under 8. But, then, that's point buy for you. I cut my teeth on rolled stats.

Really, there's but so many character concepts that need stats below an 8. And I doubt that the player in question really has a concept (beyond min-maxing) that actually requires a 3 in both Strength and Dex.

Iirc there are no NPCs with maximum stats in the campaign. But then again I dont really have any NPCs with stats at all, this isnt the type of campaign where the plot depends on NPC actions with an overarching BBEG or mentors to drag the plot along, most NPCs are just merchants and the like where having an interesting person for the PCs to talk to while they shop is the best they can hope for.

Mechanically the idea is so that A: the PCs have room to grow and B: so that they dont utterly screw themselves over by creating wacky imbalanced characters.

Out of curiosity, why does having an nine point range of stats seem boring and samey but 16 points doesnt? Is it really that big a difference? Especially when most people are going to have stats outrisde of that range anyway? 3d6 has a pretty strong bell curve after all.

Quertus
2018-12-09, 09:10 PM
Out of curiosity, why does having an nine point range of stats seem boring and samey but 16 points doesnt? Is it really that big a difference? Especially when most people are going to have stats outrisde of that range anyway? 3d6 has a pretty strong bell curve after all.

It's not the size of the range - it's the explicit removal of part of the range. It's saying, "this range of characters is acceptable, that range is not". The pH has, what, 11 base classes? What if I wrote them down on index cards, then drew 6, and said that these 6 were valid for this game, the other 5 don't even exist in the world? It's an arbitrary limitation - one that might make for interesting gameplay and world-building, or might limit players' options needlessly.

Saying "nothing below an 8" smells suspiciously like "no flaws", which itself smells suspiciously like "we must all play perfect Determinates". Which, obviously, is not something I'd expect of you (and you even have explicit flaws in your system), but it is something I'd expect you to understand.

-----

Oh, and in case you can't tell - I've been trying to give you the least benefit of the doubt, to cover any misunderstandings your players might have. But most of your responses sounded reasonable, so it seems "conversation with the player" is, as usual, the best option.

Talakeal
2018-12-10, 08:16 AM
I have no problem with player flaws, I quite like them actually, I just orefer them to be based on character concept rather than min-maxxing.

Generally, people with super low attributes are not really suitable for the adventuring life style, with a few rare exceptions. Of course, now I am questionjng why, if that is the case, why they are in the game at all.

Thank you Quertus, you have given me a lot to think about!

Florian
2018-12-10, 10:12 AM
This is a social game, which can turn competitive if all participants want to, which is not a given.

I think you've actually mentioned a very important concept right there: What is the game and why are you in it (by way of character)?

Quertus
2018-12-13, 11:12 AM
Generally, people with super low attributes are not really suitable for the adventuring life style, with a few rare exceptions. Of course, now I am questionjng why, if that is the case, why they are in the game at all.

Thank you Quertus, you have given me a lot to think about!

Glad to help. :smallbiggrin:

Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named, is, statistically, quite powerful, but is not psychologically suited for adventuring.

Armus is not statistically suited for taking more than a 5' step from a hospital, but is psychologically quite suited to be an adventurer.

Crystal was on a quest to find her father, and would do so, come hell or high water, despite initially being quite unsuited to be an adventurer.

Really, I'd argue that I probably enjoy playing characters who are unsuited for their role *in specific ways* - that perhaps how characters deal with specific types of being unsuited for their role is something that I enjoy Exploring.

Talakeal
2018-12-16, 03:38 PM
So update for y'all: We played again and things are not going well.

First, I decided to remove the mishaps table and just have the party as a whole lose half of the treasure* they have already found in the current session and I decided to make it retroactive.


Second, player B has not given up on wanting to min-max his character and has actually doubled down on it, now also wanting to drop his INT and raise his WIS so he basically has all 3s and 18s. He also wants to trade out any skills and feats that aren't directly relating to spellcasting.


Ok, so the actual adventure:

The players found out that there was a cave of trolls that was periodically kidnapping and eating travelers along a road and they went to stop it. They decided to parlay with the trolls, and basically said "You need to leave the region or we will kill you," to which the trolls basically said "I would like to see you try!".

At this point the players got pissed and said I was railroading them, that I should at least let them make a diplomacy check. I said that they were welcome to deal with the trolls, they just needed to offer the trolls something. The trolls have no reason to believe that 5 humans can actually take 14 trolls in a fight. So then the players decided to change their tactics.


A little backstory here, the previous adventure had them clear out a dungeon in a mountain, and they defeated everything inside except a warren of kobolds and a tribe of dragonborn. The kobolds simply had too many tunnels in their warrens that made attempting to clear them out not worth it, while the dragonborn had been approached with the PCs and actually forged an alliance with them, allowing the PCs to rest and recuperate in their village and fighting with them to kill some of the bigger monsters in the dungeon.


Well, the PCs said that there was another dungeon that they had already cleared out, which would give the trolls much more room to live and land to plunder, but it was further away from human trade routes so the trolls wouldn't be a danger to their people anymore. The trolls asked if it was undefended, and the PCs said it was empty except for a group of "lizard men". The trolls asked if the PCs would help them clear out the lizard men, and the PCs agreed.

The PCs were then brought to the troll shaman, who cast a few auguries to verify that the PCs were telling the truth. They were, so I allowed the PCs to make a diplomacy roll, which they passed, however the troll shaman made both groups swear a magical oath of alliance. The effect was, basically, that any damage inflicted by the trolls against the PCs, or vice versa, would also be reflected onto their attacker.


So, the PCs and the trolls went back to the previous dungeon. They wiped out the kobolds first and then the trolls wanted to kill the dragonborn. The PCs said no, the dragonborn are their friends, and that by "lizard men," they had meant the kobolds. The trolls then grew angry, stating that the PCs had tricked them, that trolls cannot live in kobold warrens, and that there was not enough food to feed the tribe of trolls and the dragonborn. The PCs remained non-comital.

Eventually the dragonborn and the trolls came into conflict, as there simply was not enough food or space for both groups to survive, and when the dragonborn drew first blood (seeing the trolls as invaders) the PCs decided to help the trolls wipe out the dragonborn. Several of the PCs even went so far as to help the trolls massacre the dragonborn village and kill and eat their children.

Now, I thought this very dark for the PCs, but I didn't say anything. Everyone in the party is some form of neutral, and I am not a DM who polices alignment.

Then the PCs said that next session they were going to find a way to break the magical oath, return to the dungeon, and wipe out the trolls.

At which point I asked the players why, if they were just intending to kill the trolls anyway, they had gone through with this whole scheme, at which point they said that they felt like using diplomacy and I told them that they needed leverage, and since the trolls didn't clearly tell the PCs what they wanted, the PCs just said the first thing that came to their mind.


So, we had an OOC conversation after the game about expectations and motives, and this is what I came away with:

The PCs don't have any long term goals or objectives for their characters or any real drive. They don't want to defend or conquer their homelands, they don't want to be heroes or villains, they aren't trying to unravel any great mystery. They are simply wandering around killing and looting stuff and hoping I will give them adventure hooks.... which doesn't really work in a hex-crawl / sandbox campaign.

Second, the players think that it is perfectly reasonable to simply go up to monsters, roll a diplomacy check, and say "Give us your treasure and / or stop being evil or we will kill you!" Which, to me, would make for a very boring game, and also one that is incredibly unrealistic as, in theory, without plot armor and the element of surprise the PCs are usually going to be the underdogs.


Any thoughts?

Mr Beer
2018-12-16, 06:25 PM
If the players want to be murderhobos, a hex crawl is a good format IMO.

Diplomacy isn't magic, I'm guessing the PCs aren't happy for monsters to make Diplomacy checks against them and just hand over all their sweet lootz if they roll well. It's reasonable to make them come up with some kind of leverage to get anything substantial out of a negotiation. If you want a free beer or a minor fee waived, fine make a Diplomacy roll, I don't care. If you want the entire inn, you're going to have to come up with a compelling reason.

Quertus
2018-12-16, 06:45 PM
Any thoughts?

So, your players are your standard Bizarro land fair.

Well, I don't think "hex crawl" and "murder-hoboing" are incompatible.

I do think that you may want to write explicit diplomacy rules for your homebrew for players stupid enough to believe that "give me all your money" is a valid diplomacy tactic. That having been said, I think you need some explicit intimidation rules, for when "give me all your money" is a valid intimidation tactic.

Also, you should run a 1-shot, where the one player is allowed to run his min-maxed 3/18 character. Of course, this, plus their recent adventures, means you should consider how you intend to cope with the "seriousness" mismatch at this table.

Lastly, you need to find and close the portal to Bizarro world. Add it to your quest log.

Florian
2018-12-16, 07:03 PM
Any thoughts?

Yeah. Broadly speaking, cases of mismatches in playing styles and expectations can rarely be solved. You want Witcher, they want Diablo. There's no real solution there, as neither side really is right or wrong when it comes to preferences of taste.

Possible ways to go at it:
- Either crank up the quality of your game even more, to impress your players into accepting and adapting to your preferred style.
- Try to create a scenario that will cater to the wants of the players. You will have to find out two thing: Could you still have fun as GM when adapting to their style. The other thing is not unimportant, as it is quite common for people to wish for things that will mage then happy or even unhappier when they get am, in this case, the game they think they prefer.
- One of the advantages of running a hex crawl is the ability to rotate GMs. Try that.

Arbane
2018-12-16, 09:18 PM
I'd say tell Player B to get bent.

Not sure what's good advice for the rest of your merry band of murderhoboes. At least they are talking to things... if only to con them. Do they like outwitting enemies? Consider having them get snarled up in a continent-wide conspiracy, requiring a LOT of Travel and Treachery.

(And now I have the name for my first OSR game.)

Koo Rehtorb
2018-12-16, 10:00 PM
You've already set up a game where "dying" leads to half of your treasure randomly disappearing for some reason. You've already turned the game into a MMO/Soft Core Diablo style thing, and you're surprised they're not taking it seriously?

Which isn't necessarily to say that they'd suddenly turn into good players if the game made some sort of actual sense. But it at least seems slightly more likely. The rest of the solution is probably "find better players".

Talakeal
2018-12-17, 12:01 AM
You've already set up a game where "dying" leads to half of your treasure randomly disappearing for some reason. You've already turned the game into a MMO/Soft Core Diablo style thing, and you're surprised they're not taking it seriously?

Which isn't necessarily to say that they'd suddenly turn into good players if the game made some sort of actual sense. But it at least seems slightly more likely. The rest of the solution is probably "find better players".

Are you actually saying that an overly gamist and / or abstracted and / or disassociated mechanic makes people take the narrative less seriously?

Because I have seen a lot of hatred towards overly gamist systems in the various edition wars that have plagued the forums over the years, but that is a new one on me.


Yeah. Broadly speaking, cases of mismatches in playing styles and expectations can rarely be solved. You want Witcher, they want Diablo. There's no real solution there, as neither side really is right or wrong when it comes to preferences of taste.

I am not actually that familiar with the Witcher. Would you mind extrapolating a little?


Well, I don't think "hex crawl" and "murder-hoboing" are incompatible.

I do think that you may want to write explicit diplomacy rules for your homebrew for players stupid enough to believe that "give me all your money" is a valid diplomacy tactic. That having been said, I think you need some explicit intimidation rules, for when "give me all your money" is a valid intimidation tactic.

I am perfectly fine with murder hoboing. It is the randomly and inconsistently wanting to use diplomacy or handle things ethically that is confusing me. If they just wanted to kill everything and take its stuff I could understand it, but the running around conflicted and confused is really stressing me out.


Also, I do have pretty explicit diplomacy rules, including modifiers based on how outlandish the request it. The problem is that they believed their request to be perfectly reasonable and felt that I was arbitrarily shutting them down.

Florian
2018-12-17, 12:53 AM
@Talakeal:

This is more based on how the abstraction is executed. For example, more traditional gaming system have a known dysfunction: On the one hand, they try to create suspense by the inclusion of failure and death, on the other hand, the overall goal to play adventures from start to finish, which can´t really happen when we have a game over state. A less invasive solution is the inclusion of mechanics like Fate points (Dark Heresy, etc.) or Edge (Shadowrun).

Diablo is a straight-forward example for a style of gaming when the players are firmly in control. The system that is used "empower" their action and choices, by building their characters, they have all the "buttons" and they can expect the outcome when smashing them.

Witcher is a way more grounded affair. Every being there has motivations, desires, fears and situations, conflicts and solutions work based on the interaction between the participants. Gerald, the protagonist, is a professional monster hunter, but each monster is also treated like a person and the interaction here is not so clear black and white.

Quertus
2018-12-17, 09:16 AM
Are you actually saying that an overly gamist and / or abstracted and / or disassociated mechanic makes people take the narrative less seriously?

Because I have seen a lot of hatred towards overly gamist systems in the various edition wars that have plagued the forums over the years, but that is a new one on me.

I am perfectly fine with murder hoboing. It is the randomly and inconsistently wanting to use diplomacy or handle things ethically that is confusing me. If they just wanted to kill everything and take its stuff I could understand it, but the running around conflicted and confused is really stressing me out.

Also, I do have pretty explicit diplomacy rules, including modifiers based on how outlandish the request it. The problem is that they believed their request to be perfectly reasonable and felt that I was arbitrarily shutting them down.

I mean, I personally tend to take more Gamist games less seriously. Or, well, you know, to treat them as more of a game.

Players want to help you test out your system, by finding excuses to poke at all the buttons, and give you feedback. What could possibly be confusing about having good testers? :smallconfused:

If your PCs' morality causes you stress, Armus might well have hospitalized you. His own unique morality was one of the points of playing him.

"What the GM believes is reasonable" is not an explicit rule, it's a call to the "read the GM's mind" minigame. While I may agree with you in this instance, imagine what would happen if a Bizarro worlder picked up your system and started GMing it for you. Making the system still function as you expect in that scenario is what I mean by an explicit rule.

Angelmaker
2018-12-17, 06:58 PM
Second, player B has not given up on wanting to min-max his character and has actually doubled down on it, now also wanting to drop his INT and raise his WIS so he basically has all 3s and 18s. He also wants to trade out any skills and feats that aren't directly relating to spellcasting.
----------
So, we had an OOC conversation after the game about expectations and motives, and this is what I came away with:

Any thoughts?
A lot of...

First of all, your predicament seems to be that you have stupid players. If what you wrote is moderately close to the truth of what happened, I'd be aghast if players of mine weren't able to grasp the basic fundamentals of negotiations.

Second, you should have had a session 0, specifically asking what the players expect from the game and inserting motivations and goals for the characters in question to help you understand what drives them and how you can handle them. You started with big hopes and tried introducing new players to a nice hobby, and while some of the things you had in your game are certainly bad ideas (harms table) you as a GM to me seem to be able to take critique and turn the game into a better one.

Furthermore, if you are about just as able to clearly communicate your ideas about the game in person as you are in writing on these forums, I can't rationalize why Player B ( the sorceror?) doesn't understand why it would be really really really bad to play a mentally and physically handicapped adventurer. Did you explain to him that a 3 is a barely human mind or that you are so clumsy, every mealtime is playing knife with mr. Scythe?

Which is doubly troubling as when you created characters for your players, asking them not only what vlass they would play, but also presenting the basic world premise and what your players would like to do in that world doesn't seem to be that much overhead. Not trying to understand your players is a no-go. Not informing your players about the basic premise of the game is a no-go. ( not saying you did squat all, i don't know. But in my experience doing those zhings saved me a lot of pain in my 20 years of GM).

So if all they want is loot and kill, you should basically only have a random encounter table, throw the hexcrawl map away and GM one encounter after the other for them, letting them fullfill their (obviously prelevalent) gory fantasies. Throw in babies they can eat, rabbit bunnies to step on and flowers they can forget to water. Let them join forces with demons, because they seem to like the chaotic evil fuggery theiy are on about.

You can even let doofus mcdoof (the minmaxer) have his retarded spellcasting prodigy, at this point i PERSOANLLY in your position wouldn't care about this game anYmore.

A) walk away and screw this. Nuclear option. I really can't see getting much enjoyment as a GM out of a group of unptincipled mass murderers who don't even understand how skills work.
B) session 0 actively happening now. Expectation management. You as well as your players need to define what game it is you're actually playing and what their problems with getting into their roles are. Because if ALL players think like that, good heavens. Usually it's only one or two players dragging down the standards and the rest either doesn't care and let's it happen or feel the game is not worth caring about anymore. Both things can be fixed by a healthy expectation management.

In any case, something needs to happen to protect either side's sanity because you as a group don't seem to play the same game.

Talakeal
2018-12-17, 08:19 PM
I think I need to clarify the TPK / damage system:

Hit Points do not represent just injury, but rather a combination of wounds, fatigue, pain, morale, and even combat momentum. A character who has reached zero hit points is simply not able to muster the will to continue fighting.

If the entire group is out of HP the entire group has lost the will to fight and must either surrender or retreat (or choose to go down in a last stand).

After being routed they will lose half of their treasure. It isn't "disappearing for no reason," rather it is lost because of some combination of the following:

-They have to abandon their baggage train, which includes most of their treasure, while fleeing
-They are taken prisoner and robbed and / or ransomed by their captors
-They must replace or repair gear that was lost or damaged in the battle or the ensuing flight
-They must pay the costs to resupply their failed expedition, buying new food, ammunition, equipment, and hirelings to regroup when they continue

Maybe my players would react better if I explained it to them in more detail? Although, honestly, they didn't have a problem with the concept of mishaps, just that the results of the table were not equally debilitating for all players, and when I asked the two experienced players if they felt that overly gamist downtime systems were causing them to take the narrative less seriously they told me that they had never even considered such a thing, so maybe not.


Now, as for the original mishap table, it was an idea I had been wanting to try out for a while.

Basically I was reading some OSR blog (Maybe Monsters and Manuals?) where he said that he was running an open table in a very specific time window and needed to wrap up each adventure at a set point, he couldn't simply pause the action until the next week as the players might not show up again for half a dozen sessions.
So he borrowed a rule from an old game where everyone was a fighter pilot. The game was about a group of pilots going on missions together, not about a lone man trying to escape enemy territory on foot, so if your plane was shot down over enemy territory you sat out the rest of the mission and then rolled on a table to see what happened to your pilot, who could be killed, injured, captured, demoted, shell-shocked, get away scot-free, etc.
He decided to refluff that able to a fantasy setting and have anyone who remained in the dungeon at the end of the session roll on the table to see what happened to them while they made their way back to town "off camera".

It sounded like a really neat idea to me; while I didn't have the problem of having to end the session at a said time I was looking for a way to "punish" the players for playing recklessly or overextending themselves without also risking ending the entire campaign based on a single bad dice roll or mistake. To me it seemed like a really elegant solution.


On a wider note, I don't know why people don't like "mini-games" during downtime. I have always really enjoyed them, for example in the Games Workshop skirmish games (Necromunda, Mordheim, LoTR Battle Companies, etc.) there are always a series of minigames and tables which you use to represent your downtime activities between battles, and I always had a blast with them, sometimes more fun than the actual battles truth be told. However, anytime I have tried to implement them in an RPG they have been met with a cold reception from my play-testers and downright hostility from internet forums.

I wonder why that is? Maybe its a topic for another thread?




A lot of...

First of all, your predicament seems to be that you have stupid players. If what you wrote is moderately close to the truth of what happened, I'd be aghast if players of mine weren't able to grasp the basic fundamentals of negotiations.

Second, you should have had a session 0, specifically asking what the players expect from the game and inserting motivations and goals for the characters in question to help you understand what drives them and how you can handle them. You started with big hopes and tried introducing new players to a nice hobby, and while some of the things you had in your game are certainly bad ideas (harms table) you as a GM to me seem to be able to take critique and turn the game into a better one.

Furthermore, if you are about just as able to clearly communicate your ideas about the game in person as you are in writing on these forums, I can't rationalize why Player B ( the sorceror?) doesn't understand why it would be really really really bad to play a mentally and physically handicapped adventurer. Did you explain to him that a 3 is a barely human mind or that you are so clumsy, every mealtime is playing knife with mr. Scythe?

Which is doubly troubling as when you created characters for your players, asking them not only what vlass they would play, but also presenting the basic world premise and what your players would like to do in that world doesn't seem to be that much overhead. Not trying to understand your players is a no-go. Not informing your players about the basic premise of the game is a no-go. ( not saying you did squat all, i don't know. But in my experience doing those zhings saved me a lot of pain in my 20 years of GM).

So if all they want is loot and kill, you should basically only have a random encounter table, throw the hexcrawl map away and GM one encounter after the other for them, letting them fullfill their (obviously prelevalent) gory fantasies. Throw in babies they can eat, rabbit bunnies to step on and flowers they can forget to water. Let them join forces with demons, because they seem to like the chaotic evil fuggery theiy are on about.

You can even let doofus mcdoof (the minmaxer) have his retarded spellcasting prodigy, at this point i PERSOANLLY in your position wouldn't care about this game anYmore.

A) walk away and screw this. Nuclear option. I really can't see getting much enjoyment as a GM out of a group of unptincipled mass murderers who don't even understand how skills work.
B) session 0 actively happening now. Expectation management. You as well as your players need to define what game it is you're actually playing and what their problems with getting into their roles are. Because if ALL players think like that, good heavens. Usually it's only one or two players dragging down the standards and the rest either doesn't care and let's it happen or feel the game is not worth caring about anymore. Both things can be fixed by a healthy expectation management.

In any case, something needs to happen to protect either side's sanity because you as a group don't seem to play the same game.

I am not sure that I would call them stupid. Basically, three players are new and are just going along with the group not really confident enough to rock the boat. Of the two experienced players one is a power gaming min-maxxer who doesn't really care about the fluffy elements of the game. The other has such a strong social phobia that he wants dealing NPCs to boil down to him telling me what he wants from them and then me giving him a DC for a charisma check, and if I ask him either what he is offering in return or what approach he is taking he panics and begins to verbally flail around and say the first thing that comes to his mind.

Player B is a classic power gamer. He wants to play the most powerful character possible, fluff be damned. This is the same player who, several years ago, played a character who was so weak she couldn't move under the weight of her own gear and was mad that I wouldn't let the fighter give her a piggyback ride in combat because there was no rule against it.

He is also rather stubborn, and I am sure that if I let him make such a character anytime it doesn't work out the way he hopes he will just assumed that I am going out of my way to target him and prove him wrong.


Yeah, I really guess I should have placed more emphasis on coming up with party goals during our session zero. We did a pretty good job coming up with personalities and backgrounds, but in hindsight we should have spent more time on motivations and expectations. Maybe we will have a talk about that before or after the next session.


I mean, I personally tend to take more Gamist games less seriously. Or, well, you know, to treat them as more of a game.

Players want to help you test out your system, by finding excuses to poke at all the buttons, and give you feedback. What could possibly be confusing about having good testers? :smallconfused:

If your PCs' morality causes you stress, Armus might well have hospitalized you. His own unique morality was one of the points of playing him.

"What the GM believes is reasonable" is not an explicit rule, it's a call to the "read the GM's mind" minigame. While I may agree with you in this instance, imagine what would happen if a Bizarro worlder picked up your system and started GMing it for you. Making the system still function as you expect in that scenario is what I mean by an explicit rule.

For me, unless the game mechanics are actively working against the fiction, I tend to treat all games with pretty much the same level of narrative immersion unless they are abstract they don't have a narrative at all (like Uno or something).

This is not a playtest. This is just a regular campaign for fun.

Its not really that my PCs morality is stressing me out, its that there random and contradictory actions are wasting everyone's time (for example doing a quest to for no reward other than to earn someone's favor and then immediately turning around and killing their ally) and, I suspect, killing their immersion and long term interest in the game as they don't have a consistent character to play or goal to work towards.

I don't know if I would ever want to play a game where the GM had no leeway in interpreting what category of challenge various tasks fall under. It would be unnecessarily restrictive, produce bizarro land results of its own, and they write-up for each skill would be the size of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.


@Talakeal:

This is more based on how the abstraction is executed. For example, more traditional gaming system have a known dysfunction: On the one hand, they try to create suspense by the inclusion of failure and death, on the other hand, the overall goal to play adventures from start to finish, which can´t really happen when we have a game over state. A less invasive solution is the inclusion of mechanics like Fate points (Dark Heresy, etc.) or Edge (Shadowrun).

Diablo is a straight-forward example for a style of gaming when the players are firmly in control. The system that is used "empower" their action and choices, by building their characters, they have all the "buttons" and they can expect the outcome when smashing them.

Witcher is a way more grounded affair. Every being there has motivations, desires, fears and situations, conflicts and solutions work based on the interaction between the participants. Gerald, the protagonist, is a professional monster hunter, but each monster is also treated like a person and the interaction here is not so clear black and white.

Huh. I had a friend in high school who called it "the veil," the illusion that the DM wants to kill the PCs when in truth the DM wants the PCs to succeed. He claimed that anything that allows him to see behind the veil ruined the game him, so I guess this could be more of the same. He needed the illusion of overcoming an all powerful killer DM to make the game fun for him.


Yeah, I suppose that Diablo / Witcher comparison is indeed a fairly apt one.




Edit: Found the blog post I mentioned earlier. Here (https://jrients.blogspot.com/2008/11/dungeons-dawn-patrol.html#links).

Angelmaker
2018-12-17, 10:16 PM
I am not sure that I would call them stupid. Basically, three players are new and are just going along with the group not really confident enough to rock the boat. Of the two experienced players one is a power gaming min-maxxer who doesn't really care about the fluffy elements of the game. The other has such a strong social phobia that he wants dealing NPCs to boil down to him telling me what he wants from them and then me giving him a DC for a charisma check, and if I ask him either what he is offering in return or what approach he is taking he panics and begins to verbally flail around and say the first thing that comes to his mind.

Player B is a classic power gamer. He wants to play the most powerful character possible, fluff be damned. This is the same player who, several years ago, played a character who was so weak she couldn't move under the weight of her own gear and was mad that I wouldn't let the fighter give her a piggyback ride in combat because there was no rule against it.

He is also rather stubborn, and I am sure that if I let him make such a character anytime it doesn't work out the way he hopes he will just assumed that I am going out of my way to target him and prove him wrong.


Yeah, I really guess I should have placed more emphasis on coming up with party goals during our session zero. We did a pretty good job coming up with personalities and backgrounds, but in hindsight we should have spent more time on motivations and expectations. Maybe we will have a talk about that before or after the next session.


I see were you're coming from and I like that you stick up for them. But i still feel there's a huge gap between abstracting the diplomacy to a numbers game and failing to understand that you're tying to bargain with your pants down. Let's drop the "stupid" (that was kind of uncalled for, so I want to apologize) and call it "unreasonably optimistic expectations".

Regarding mr munchkin mcmunch: why don't you select monsters with a stat of 3 (i guess some intelligent animals like dogs could be there?) and show the statblocks to him. That should drive the point home, that playing a wis 3 based character is just... Having "unreasonably optimistic expectations" of what a 3 in a stat means?

Also how do you abstract constitution 18 from a strenght of 3? What would that even look like? Like raistlin and conan the barbarian had a lovechild?

Anyway, I think you're right and simply not letting him create a character like that is for the good of all.

I feel you need to show some tough love and drive some points home. I know I would never have your patience and I even have a player in my weekly campaign who is diagnosed with attention deficit and minor tourette.

Pauly
2018-12-18, 12:15 AM
Min maxing is a problem, always has been always will be. However IMO it has been exacerbated by computer rpgs where other party members automatically pick up the slack, and the P part of the PC gives the C more INT and WIS than the player sheet.

Some ways of dealing with it that I’ve seen:
- Putting players into situations where they have to individually roll checks and bad stuff only happens to players that fail the roll.
- have low INT/WIS players accidentally set off traps/alert guards because “I wonder what this button does”. If the player objects make them take a test against their “3” stat.
- split the party and put all the low min statted players together and have to overcome a min stat problem.
- have a session that has no problems solvable by max stat.
- have them break stuff because min stat is so low. “The shelf of potions falls down, everyone gets one chance to catch a potion. Roll a dexterity check, oops you dropped your potion and it smashes on the floor”.

I make things like disengaging a target or changing weapons a skill check if players have dropped their stat to superlow. If they want to give advise to other players about combat positioning it’s a int/wis check to see if the character can (a) generate the idea and (2) communicate the idea.
If a player has minned CHA I will apply their modifier as a penalty to the PC who is the face as the NPC wants nothing to do with the super-ugly/obnoxious dude with the CHA 3.

Long story short, make the player painfully aware of the effects the character’s minned stats has on the story.

Pelle
2018-12-18, 03:27 AM
Min maxing is a problem, always has been always will be. However IMO it has been exacerbated by computer rpgs where other party members automatically pick up the slack, and the P part of the PC gives the C more INT and WIS than the player sheet.

Some ways of dealing with it that I’ve seen:
[...]
Long story short, make the player painfully aware of the effects the character’s minned stats has on the story.

That sounds overly punitive, and taking control of the character away from the player. Low mental stats doesn't necessarily have to affect the decisions the player make for the character, although it can be considered "bad roleplaying". Targeting the character and forcing it to pass Wis checks or else have do stupid stuff sounds like a horrible way to run the game.

Anyways, to me the min-maxer sounds like a problem player, and if it was me I would probably try to continue playing without him. As for the mishaps table, that sounds fine as a mechanism to get the party back to the town at the end of every session or as a TPK mitigation measure. Just be sure to get buy-in from the players for it.

Anonymouswizard
2018-12-18, 04:47 AM
Second, player B has not given up on wanting to min-max his character and has actually doubled down on it, now also wanting to drop his INT and raise his WIS so he basically has all 3s and 18s. He also wants to trade out any skills and feats that aren't directly relating to spellcasting.

He's not just a minmaxer, he's a bad one. Seriously, I minmax, and most groups I play with see no problem with doing a bit of it (one GM even assumed we would munchkin a bit and purposefully gave us lower point totals than we 'should' have had, we ended up fine). Instead of minimising his weaknesses he's added a bunch in by making himself a weak, clumsy idiot savant. Just have the party need to balance over a slightly narrow bridge or something, and wait

Pelle
2018-12-18, 05:54 AM
He's not just a minmaxer, he's a bad one.

Instead of minimising his weaknesses he's added a bunch in by making himself a weak, clumsy idiot savant.

So he's a maxer, not a min-maxer then...

kyoryu
2018-12-18, 02:12 PM
So he's a maxer, not a min-maxer then...

Well, the term "min-max" or "mini-max" originally came from setting one thing to the minimum and the other to the maximum.... but it's been changed to general optimization.

Pauly
2018-12-18, 09:05 PM
Well, the term "min-max" or "mini-max" originally came from setting one thing to the minimum and the other to the maximum.... but it's been changed to general optimization.

Optmizing carries a different connotation.
Optimizing is a bit more broad spectrum, and acknowledges that there is a point of diminishing returns.
Min-maxing is about going beyond the point of diminishing returns, and sacrificing other capabilities.

For example with sword design (usual caveats about there is no one true type and there being variations in design)
A rapier is optimized for thrusting. However it retains some capacity for cutting and has good hand protection.
A smallsword is maximized for thrusting. It has no cutting capacity and only vestigal hand protection.
A viking-era sword is optimized for cutting, it has a broad blade with good cutting geometry. It retains a point and is nimble enough for parrying.
A falchion is maximized for cutting. It has a very broad blade and (usually) only theoreticall thrusting capacity. It’s shorter length and wide blade make it comparably ineffective at parrying.

kyoryu
2018-12-18, 09:42 PM
Optmizing carries a different connotation.
Optimizing is a bit more broad spectrum, and acknowledges that there is a point of diminishing returns.
Min-maxing is about going beyond the point of diminishing returns, and sacrificing other capabilities.

Yes.

And in this case, taking a 3 dex to get 18 cha fits within the classic definition of min-maxing, while Pelle said he's not a min-maxer. Which is what I was pointing out, along with the fact that, in general, today "min-max" is used broadly to mean "optimization", thus leading to Pelle's statement.

Quertus
2018-12-18, 11:43 PM
1)After being routed they will lose half of their treasure. It isn't "disappearing for no reason," rather it is lost because of some combination of the following:

-They have to abandon their baggage train, which includes most of their treasure, while fleeing
-They are taken prisoner and robbed and / or ransomed by their captors
-They must replace or repair gear that was lost or damaged in the battle or the ensuing flight
-They must pay the costs to resupply their failed expedition, buying new food, ammunition, equipment, and hirelings to regroup when they continue

2)On a wider note, I don't know why people don't like "mini-games" during downtime. I have always really enjoyed them, for example in the Games Workshop skirmish games (Necromunda, Mordheim, LoTR Battle Companies, etc.) there are always a series of minigames and tables which you use to represent your downtime activities between battles, and I always had a blast with them, sometimes more fun than the actual battles truth be told. However, anytime I have tried to implement them in an RPG they have been met with a cold reception from my play-testers and downright hostility from internet forums.

I wonder why that is? Maybe its a topic for another thread?

3)The other has such a strong social phobia that he wants dealing NPCs to boil down to him telling me what he wants from them and then me giving him a DC for a charisma check, and if I ask him either what he is offering in return or what approach he is taking he panics and begins to verbally flail around and say the first thing that comes to his mind.

4)Yeah, I really guess I should have placed more emphasis on coming up with party goals during our session zero. 5)We did a pretty good job coming up with personalities and backgrounds, but in hindsight we should have spent more time on motivations and expectations. Maybe we will have a talk about that before or after the next session.

6)For me, unless the game mechanics are actively working against the fiction, I tend to treat all games with pretty much the same level of narrative immersion unless they are abstract they don't have a narrative at all (like Uno or something).

7)This is not a playtest. This is just a regular campaign for fun.

8)there random and contradictory actions are wasting everyone's time and, I suspect, killing their immersion and long term interest in the game as they don't have a consistent character to play or goal to work towards.

9)I don't know if I would ever want to play a game where the GM had no leeway in interpreting what category of challenge various tasks fall under. It would be unnecessarily restrictive, produce bizarro land results of its own, and they write-up for each skill would be the size of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

1) Losing half their treasure is "just because", in that no action they take will change that amount. No matter how much of their money is invested in retainers, no matter what those retainers' orders are, no matter if all their money is in one gem that they swallow if captured, they lost half their funds. It's a Gamist "just because", no matter the attempt to put a logical window-dressing on it after the fact.

2) yes, make that thread.

3) so just boil it down to a check for him. Just make those explicit rules I talked about, so he has to fill in all the blanks in the process of asking for said roll. "I attempt to convince x to do Y for me, using z as payment / leverage / etc. Diplomacy DC Q?"

4) yeah, probably.

5) cool. Although I am a bit confused by "personality without motivations"... Unless you mean that the characters had personalities, but the players lacked motivations.

6) does the detail level change your immersion level? Do you feel equally immersed using player skills to haggle with a merchant, using complex Ven diagram haggling rules to determine your current state in the haggle process, making a single haggle skill check, and drawing from a "haggle results" deck?

7) fair enough. It is their first time using the system though, is it not? So them Exploring the system is to be expected, and produces similar results.

8) I think that they have to have "immersion and long term interest in the game" in the first place for them to kill it.

I agree that their actions are not conducive to forming such. So, what (if anything) can you do to provide an environment conducive to them forming "immersion and long term interest in the game"?

9) "I convince the BBEG to be help with this Simple task of handing over the McGuffin of Doom, offering the Amazing commodity of my friendship". Whether the GM agrees that this is a simple task, and whether the GM agrees that The Power of Friendship is an Amazing-rank commodity says a lot about the tone of the game.

Florian
2018-12-19, 01:05 AM
@Quertus:

You´re absolutely wrong there. The original abstraction behind HP and AC have very deep war-gaming and Simulationist roots.
HP: This was developed to simulate the staying power and effectiveness of a unit of troops. Instead of dealing with it on the level of the individual troopers (I think Warhammer uses this approach, by directly reducing the numbers based on incoming damage), it deals with a combination of effects, from taking damage, environmental conditions, loss of morale running out of supplies, whatever. Once HP hit zero, the unit is "broken" and ceases to be an effective combatant, no matter how many individual troopers remaining and in whatever condition they are on the individual level. (Hence why the 4E Warlord can "heal" by bolstering morale, appealing to fighting spirit and such. In regards to the original abstraction, that class was right on spot).
AC: This was actually developed for naval war-games, to differentiate between a "hit" and a "breach". The larger warships, especially ships of the line, could be riddled with bullet and cannon holes, but as long as no functional part or important compartment was breached, that damage didn't mean a thing for all practical purposes. (Again, 4E handled that abstraction better with a lot of powers having a "on Miss" line build into them, reflecting a "partial breach")

Basically, it was a pretty stupid decision to use both sets of abstraction 1:1 for dealing with the level of individual characters and 3E managed to mangle that even more into something unrecognizable.
But: That isn´t "Gamist" in any way. That said, the way that Talakeal extended the underlying abstraction that beyond the point that reaching the "broken" condition lies death is just quite a bit too much, because it effectively removes death from the game, as long as you have items or money to prevent it.

@Talakeal:

Pathfinder actually has a fully developed "Downtime" system (Ultimate Campaign). Most of the newer Adventure Path include a lot of "Mini Games" and stuff that you have to handle during adventure downtime, like managing a rebellion or insurrection, what actually happens in downtime between tours of duty in a military campaign, your day to day business in a courtly setting and so on.

Pelle
2018-12-19, 04:21 AM
Yes.

And in this case, taking a 3 dex to get 18 cha fits within the classic definition of min-maxing, while Pelle said he's not a min-maxer. Which is what I was pointing out, along with the fact that, in general, today "min-max" is used broadly to mean "optimization", thus leading to Pelle's statement.

I have no idea where the term comes from, I was just riffing on the previous statement, describing min-maxing as maximising the benefits, while minimizing the detriments. This character seems to be all about the benefits, and not at all caring about having big detriments. Hence maxing, within that use of the term. As others have pointed out, that doesn't look like a very optimal build...

Quertus
2018-12-19, 07:33 AM
@Quertus:

You´re absolutely wrong there.

You may want to clarify what you mean by this part, because the rest of your post seems to be "but I agree with you 100%". :smallconfused: :smallamused:

Cluedrew
2018-12-19, 08:40 AM
The PCs don't have any long term goals or objectives for their characters or any real drive. They don't want to defend or conquer their homelands, they don't want to be heroes or villains, they aren't trying to unravel any great mystery. They are simply wandering around killing and looting stuff and hoping I will give them adventure hooks.... which doesn't really work in a hex-crawl / sandbox campaign.
[...]
Any thoughts?I don't think they want to play a role-playing game at all. They want to play Descent or Imperial Assault or some other actual dungeon crawl game. Maybe you should switch systems to a board-game or something.

Talakeal
2018-12-19, 09:01 AM
But: That isn´t "Gamist" in any way. That said, the way that Talakeal extended the underlying abstraction that beyond the point that reaching the "broken" condition lies death is just quite a bit too much, because it effectively removes death from the game, as long as you have items or money to prevent it.

So are you saying that it is the removal of player death itself that is the problem?

If that is the case, it must be a subconscious psychological thing, because my players specifically said they liked that rule.

Furthermore, in my experiance death isnt really much of a thing in modern gaming. Unless you are hit by a massive attack or an enemy decides to ignore active combatants and finish of an unconscious character death just isnt a possibility.

In all the games I have played or run in over the last quarter century I can probably count the number of dead PCs on my fingers, and the majority of those were raised almost immediately, turning death into a mere financial setback.

As I recall, PC deaths al,ost always occurred only when a min maxxed character did someting without the support of the party, for example going off alone or randomly attacking a friendly npc.


I have no idea where the term comes from, I was just riffing on the previous statement, describing min-maxing as maximising the benefits, while minimizing the detriments. This character seems to be all about the benefits, and not at all caring about having big detriments. Hence maxing, within that use of the term. As others have pointed out, that doesn't look like a very optimal build...

I have always taken min max to mean maximizing the aspects of the character you care about and minimizing those you dont, so the mage in my campaign would be a classic min maxxer.

Also, optimizer was invented on the forums on the mid 2000s to try and rebrand power-gaming without the negative stigma that was attached to it.


1) Losing half their treasure is "just because", in that no action they take will change that amount. No matter how much of their money is invested in retainers, no matter what those retainers' orders are, no matter if all their money is in one gem that they swallow if captured, they lost half their funds. It's a Gamist "just because", no matter the attempt to put a logical window-dressing on it after the fact.

2) yes, make that thread.

3) so just boil it down to a check for him. Just make those explicit rules I talked about, so he has to fill in all the blanks in the process of asking for said roll. "I attempt to convince x to do Y for me, using z as payment / leverage / etc. Diplomacy DC Q?"

4) yeah, probably.

5) cool. Although I am a bit confused by "personality without motivations"... Unless you mean that the characters had personalities, but the players lacked motivations.

6) does the detail level change your immersion level? Do you feel equally immersed using player skills to haggle with a merchant, using complex Ven diagram haggling rules to determine your current state in the haggle process, making a single haggle skill check, and drawing from a "haggle results" deck?

7) fair enough. It is their first time using the system though, is it not? So them Exploring the system is to be expected, and produces similar results.

8) I think that they have to have "immersion and long term interest in the game" in the first place for them to kill it.

I agree that their actions are not conducive to forming such. So, what (if anything) can you do to provide an environment conducive to them forming "immersion and long term interest in the game"?

9) "I convince the BBEG to be help with this Simple task of handing over the McGuffin of Doom, offering the Amazing commodity of my friendship". Whether the GM agrees that this is a simple task, and whether the GM agrees that The Power of Friendship is an Amazing-rank commodity says a lot about the tone of the game.

3: I have been trying to do just that for years. I have told him that all he needs to do is tell me what he wants, what he will offer, and what approach he is using to present the deal, but that is just too much for him.

His biggest problem is coming up with what to offer the npcs. He has told me repeatedly that he wants social interactions in an rpg to work like a store, he goes in and tells them what he wants and they give him a price. Of course, that doesnt work so well when you are dealing with intangible things rather than cash.

1: well... I specifically made it half because the players didnt want any randomness involved. There are lots of rules in RPGs that dont follow realistic probabilities for gamist reasons, I just look at those as averages and abstractions.

If the players want to take specific steps to protect their wealth I would be open to that on a case by case basis, but I cant really think of any situations that would drastically alter the balance without having large built in costs and / or risks of their own.

For example, the retainer is being paid to transport treasure through the wilderness which is an inherent cost, as well as incredibly risky as he is both vulnerable and under enormous temptation to betray the party. Likewise a single swallowed gem requires me to give them a significantly valuable single gem early on in the adventure, which is very unlikely, and recovering a single gem from their waste is pretty difficult, especially if they are pooping in the woods at nigh, possibly while lost or being chased or suffering from dysentary.

But ultimately, there are going to be gamist elements in any game and you either have to ignore them or work with your DM to come up with an exception that works for you on a case by case basis. For example, in 3e you can only raise an ability score every fourth level. If I have my scrawny character hitting the gym and pumping iron 24/7 but I never make it past third level by RAW I will never get any stronger.

To me the idea that the inclusion of a single gamist mechanic, especially one that rarely if ever actually comes up in play, shattering someones ability to take the narrative seriously is totally bewildering.

Quertus
2018-12-19, 09:38 AM
Also, optimizer was invented on the forums on the mid 2000s to try and rebrand power-gaming without the negative stigma that was attached to it.

3: I have been trying to do just that for years. I have told him that all he needs to do is tell me what he wants, what he will offer, and what approach he is using to present the deal, but that is just too much for him.

His biggest problem is coming up with what to offer the npcs. He has told me repeatedly that he wants social interactions in an rpg to work like a store, he goes in and tells them what he wants and they give him a price. Of course, that doesnt work so well when you are dealing with intangible things rather than cash.

1:To me the idea that the inclusion of a single gamist mechanic, especially one that rarely if ever actually comes up in play, shattering someones ability to take the narrative seriously is totally bewildering.

0) such a pity that it had a negative connotation to begin with. Play to the table's balance range.

3) :smallredface: well, that's a perfectly reasonable way to do things, too. Admittedly, it requires the target to know what you can provide, or to give "unreasonable" requests for the players to sort through.

1) it's not just a single mechanic that causes that reaction. Well, OK, it can be, if either a) it goes against some major part of the character (PoW who keeps his watch hidden for years, for example); b) the GM just pulls a, "nah, Gamist" response rather than appropriately using Rule 0.

Segev
2018-12-19, 06:09 PM
For a hex crawl, their motive seems to be “get loot and fight monsters.”

Use that. Have the world react to their burgeoning reputation. Or just run a kick in the door campaign. Or find players more interested in what you’re running.

Talakeal
2018-12-20, 01:51 PM
For a hex crawl, their motive seems to be “get loot and fight monsters.”

Use that. Have the world react to their burgeoning reputation. Or just run a kick in the door campaign. Or find players more interested in what you’re running.

I have no problem with fight monsters get loot, but when the players go to all the trouble of befriending monsters and THEN killing them for loot it seems like it wastes everyones time as well as making for a strange and inconsistent narrative / morality.

Pelle
2018-12-20, 01:57 PM
I have no problem with fight monsters get loot, but when the players go to all the trouble of befriending monsters and THEN killing them for loot it seems like it wastes everyones time as well as making for a strange and inconsistent narrative / morality.

Have you tried asking them out-of-character during the game why they are doing things and what they hope to achieve by their actions? That sounds a bit like players who try to guess what their GM wants them to do, while the GM doesn't want to influence their actions and don't tell them that they are doing weird things.

noob
2018-12-20, 02:28 PM
I dont have a problem with random event tables or consequences myself. Though as a player or GM i would prefer death to be a possibility on said table.

The consequences should generally be even though. For instance If you can fix your broken bone X by paying 10gp and chatting for 5 minutes then you should be able to find your lost material possessions with a 10gp bribe to find out where they are and a quick 1on1 encounter or fight to get them back.

That way nobody feels too screwed over. I would also let the players roll on the table. Its silly but it will make them feel more in control.

As for min maxer, just no. Tell him a 3 STR and CON makes him severely physically disabled. He would not be able to travel all day, carry his own gear, would be riddles with allergies and constantly sick. I might let him go as low as 6, with the full understanding of what the consequences would be for someone whose weak, frail and sickly in job thats physically demanding, violent and constantly exposes the individual to exposure to bad weather, filth, foreign blood with unknown pathogens and old food.

Perhaps remind him that food poisoning and water born illnesses are very real threats in a world without refrigeration or purified water available. Especially for a person with a compromised immune system.

If he insists maybe let him go with his 3 CON. And then roleplay the joys is sneezing, coughing and the umm "bubble guts" all at once while hes trying to cast. Should be hilarious for everyone else and teach him a lesson.

Disease resistance is not represented by constitution: it is represented by fortitude saves.
And there is near to no diseases in dnd that hampers casting on the other hand you can die fast to diseases since many diseases deals constitution damage.

Angelmaker
2018-12-20, 04:58 PM
I have no problem with fight monsters get loot, but when the players go to all the trouble of befriending monsters and THEN killing them for loot it seems like it wastes everyones time as well as making for a strange and inconsistent narrative / morality.

Yes, that is an absolutly valid point. Honestly, from the story you told so far you seem to be an incrdibly accomodating GM. If your group is a special needs group (as in "most groups have something special that needs tending to since people are so wildyly different) and you have to deal with a lot of those in your group, then it's also hard to give good advice. Honestly, i'd like to play in your group for a session or two to see for myself what I'd as a GM myself would do.

Option 1) gloss over it and simply continue their weird streak of change, possibly having a session 0 to reset the train.
Option 2) their weird tendency to screw over former allies has earned them a bad reputation. They are exiled from most civilized places and untrustworthy people and even monsters approach them to ask them to join their ranks of merry bandits. They can collect more villains to their little group and get betryed constantly, having to kill of some allies in defense of their leadership positions and soon can conquer the settlements they formerly worked for. They are agents of chaos.

geppetto
2018-12-21, 01:25 AM
Disease resistance is not represented by constitution: it is represented by fortitude saves.
And there is near to no diseases in dnd that hampers casting on the other hand you can die fast to diseases since many diseases deals constitution damage.

And fortitude saves get a penalty from crap CON. Thus making you sickly.

And theres any damn disease the GM can think of in the game. So if someone wants to put in one that gives nausea, dizziness, confusion (mental fogginess is pretty common when sick) or even the dang hiccups (good luck with the verbal component) then its there. Thats how this GMing thing works.

geppetto
2018-12-21, 01:28 AM
I have no problem with fight monsters get loot, but when the players go to all the trouble of befriending monsters and THEN killing them for loot it seems like it wastes everyones time as well as making for a strange and inconsistent narrative / morality.

So? Real people usually have strange and inconsistent or downright contradictory moralities when you really dig into it. This actually makes the characters MORE believable and realistic then if they had strict and well thought out moral philosophies.

Incorrect
2018-12-21, 04:23 AM
That sounds a bit like players who try to guess what their GM wants them to do, while the GM doesn't want to influence their actions and don't tell them that they are doing weird things.

This point might be worth considering.
There is a type of player who just want to have fun by having the GM tell a cool story that they get to act in, and they will try to follow the story as well as they can.

noob
2018-12-21, 05:41 AM
And fortitude saves get a penalty from crap CON. Thus making you sickly.

And theres any damn disease the GM can think of in the game. So if someone wants to put in one that gives nausea, dizziness, confusion (mental fogginess is pretty common when sick) or even the dang hiccups (good luck with the verbal component) then its there. Thats how this GMing thing works.
The average level 1 wizard which dumped con would take a rat familiar and the great fortitude feat.(fortitude saves are one of the main saves so you better have to start by that) and that compensate the -4 penalty from the stats thus making you have a +0
Do you describe each commoner ever as sickly while all the commoners have +0 to their fortitude save?
Do you describe every expert of a level lower than 3 as sickly as they have +0 to their fortitude save?
Do you describe every noble of a level lower than 3 as sickly as they have +0 to their fortitude save?
No you do not.
Therefore inflicting that penalty to the wizard is just absurd and makes your entire world entirely inconsistent.
However if the wizard did also not go through the effort of picking a rat familiar and of picking the great fortitude feat then he will be sickly but it is a really dumb build since at low levels fortitude saves are needed a lot.(at high level you can have a buff stack making you immune to most things that needs a fortitude save and use polymorphing spells that override your stats or become a necropolitan and thus make constitution become a non issue)
Honestly why did he not dump charisma like a normal person: dumping charisma allows you to get extra opponents which is the main resource therefore dumping charisma is a positive thing and people tries to avoid effects that increase their charisma for that reason.
If you dump charisma hard enough you save time walking toward the bad guys: while you walk toward the king to take the mission to kill the bad guys the king, his guard and all the surrounding armies and villages tries to attack you immediately so you do not need to walk as much before the first opponents and you save time talking to the king(since he attacks you on sight you do not need to ask him where the bad guys are then you will loot the maps for war in the tactics room).
Dumping wisdom allows you to be insane and then confuse the gm but since will saves are one of the common saves it is inefficient.
Dumping str allows you to have an excuse for not carrying anything.

Florian
2018-12-21, 06:10 AM
@noob:

Nope. The Wizard is still sickly. He's just surprisingly resilient for someone as sickly.

Cluedrew
2018-12-21, 08:49 AM
The average level 1 wizard which dumped con would take a rat familiar and the great fortitude feat.(fortitude saves are one of the main saves so you better have to start by that) and that compensate the -4 penalty from the stats thus making you have a +0But isn't +4 of that +0 from magic and therefore not part of the physical construction that determines if they are sickly or not? Or whatever classification you would use for sickly. I would use "the appearance of being sick" which I find tends to be if you are very sick, or have been sick for a while. People can be very ill and look perfectly healthy.

Quertus
2018-12-21, 07:49 PM
Have you considered the possibility that your players are fans of backstabbing the NPCs?

Perhaps that act itself brings them joy, perhaps that act is a goal in and of itself.

Talakeal
2018-12-21, 08:02 PM
So? Real people usually have strange and inconsistent or downright contradictory moralities when you really dig into it. This actually makes the characters MORE believable and realistic then if they had strict and well thought out moral philosophies.

That's never been my experience. I agree that strict and well thought out is a bit much, but I have never personally known someone who will do a complete 180 about an important issue only to trash their own work for no reason. Maybe over a long time as their opinions change, but not from one day to the next.

Also, even if it was realistic, it is still narratively unsatisfying and wasting everyone's time.


This point might be worth considering.
There is a type of player who just want to have fun by having the GM tell a cool story that they get to act in, and they will try to follow the story as well as they can.

Yeah. I have had a lot of problems in the past with trying to lead the players down a path and then they simply can't get the clues and wander around aimless and frustrated, so I am trying very hard to keep a completely open world this game.

It is weird though, "railroading" is the big internet bogeyman, but in my experience the shorter a leash you keep the players on the happier they are.


Have you considered the possibility that your players are fans of backstabbing the NPCs?

Perhaps that act itself brings them joy, perhaps that act is a goal in and of itself.

Perhaps. But why can't they verbalize this desire?

zinycor
2018-12-21, 08:21 PM
I don't see a problem with having a character being str and dex 3, As strong as a house cat, and dextrous as a snail.

For the most part, he was right to complain, Not being able to build your own character can be horribly boring, and random misshaps on death which could go from nothing to get a debilitating disease is pretty bull****.

So, in the end, this doesn't seem like a problem at all.

Cluedrew
2018-12-21, 08:24 PM
It is weird though, "railroading" is the big internet bogeyman, but in my experience the shorter a leash you keep the players on the happier they are.Its only railroading if you force the players to take it otherwise it is just a linear adventure.

And yes, lots of guides really help in certain types of games (including types your players are looking for). When there is a script for the players to follow - even if it is pretty loose - it really helps if the players know what the script is. Even if it is fine to deviate from the script, I think that doing so is better done on purpose. If only so it is done at reasonable times. There are other types of games where that doesn't hold, but they are pretty different in structure.

Florian
2018-12-21, 08:32 PM
It is weird though, "railroading" is the big internet bogeyman, but in my experience the shorter a leash you keep the players on the happier they are.

True. Most players are not into it to create or explore, but to be entertained.

zinycor
2018-12-21, 08:38 PM
having read further into the thread a little more, I got a new advice.

No, don't let the Sorcerer character be 3 str and dex, That might work for other systems and be really fun, But if you are playing a system based on DnD 5e it would just get him killed.

Instead provide him with more options for his character, like other source books and archetypes that he could play.

In the end, it just seems that you have a player that just wants to have a power fantasy while playing DnD (OH no!! The horror!!), just let him.

As for the random encounters... How do these happen that a revenant can down so many characters? Could give us a play by play of any of these deadly scenarios? because it does seem like you are running them in an Unimaginative way.

zinycor
2018-12-21, 08:43 PM
I have no problem with fight monsters get loot, but when the players go to all the trouble of befriending monsters and THEN killing them for loot it seems like it wastes everyones time as well as making for a strange and inconsistent narrative / morality.

What is this wasting time you are talking about? You are playing DnD man, it's a waste of time by definition xD

Now, that might be my own Bias talking. Since last session my players destroyed everything they had worked for a long time in just a session...

But since it was Them who did it... We just a hearthy laugh and I am now preparing the next session.

Pauly
2018-12-21, 10:46 PM
I don't see a problem with having a character being str and dex 3, As strong as a house cat, and dextrous as a snail.

.

Add that to INT 18 and WIS 18 and you have Steven Hawking, but without the fancy chair.

AMFV
2018-12-21, 10:56 PM
Add that to INT 18 and WIS 18 and you have Steven Hawking, but without the fancy chair.

There should definitely be a campaign centered around the adventures of Steven Hawking.

Darth Ultron
2018-12-22, 12:04 AM
That's never been my experience. I agree that strict and well thought out is a bit much, but I have never personally known someone who will do a complete 180 about an important issue only to trash their own work for no reason. Maybe over a long time as their opinions change, but not from one day to the next.

Also, even if it was realistic, it is still narratively unsatisfying and wasting everyone's time.

Well, I can say such people exist...and are quite common. You just need to hang out with more ''extreme" people.

For something to be "narratively unsatisfying and wasting everyone's time" is just an opinion. It's what you like: other people like other things. And for a group game, you have to accept others opinions....sometimes.




Yeah. I have had a lot of problems in the past with trying to lead the players down a path and then they simply can't get the clues and wander around aimless and frustrated, so I am trying very hard to keep a completely open world this game.

I think the leading the players is the best way to go: the game will be directed and focused...and everyone will have fun, no matter what the players do.

I find a lot of players do everything they can to ruin the game and more so ruin the fun for everyone...themselves included. AND then they whine and complain about it, as if they did not do anything...when they caused it 100%. This is why it's best for the DM to take the lead....and drag the players kicking and screaming to have a fun game.




It is weird though, "railroading" is the big internet bogeyman, but in my experience the shorter a leash you keep the players on the happier they are.

Railroading is THE way to go, so says I the Railroad Baron.



Perhaps. But why can't they verbalize this desire?

This is a general people problem: lots of people can't ''verbalize" anything they want or don't want. It's just part of being human.

Talakeal
2018-12-22, 02:11 AM
Add that to INT 18 and WIS 18 and you have Steven Hawking, but without the fancy chair.

No no, he is a sorcerer. He is dumping INT as well and having a high CHA instead.


What is this wasting time you are talking about? You are playing DnD man, it's a waste of time by definition xD

Now, that might be my own Bias talking. Since last session my players destroyed everything they had worked for a long time in just a session...

But since it was Them who did it... We just a hearthy laugh and I am now preparing the next session.

I mean, I guess you could look at it that way.

Basically, they spent an entire session where they got no loot, no XP, didn't explore anything, didn't advance the plot, didn't make any net gain as far as making allies or social contacts, and worst of all didn't really have any fun (they seemed quite morose and regretful about having to kill their allies).

I mean, yeah, I guess we got to game, but when you only play six hours every two weeks it seems a shame to have a game where the players don't accomplish anything.


As for the random encounters... How do these happen that a revenant can down so many characters? Could give us a play by play of any of these deadly scenarios? because it does seem like you are running them in an Unimaginative way.

It was a deadly encounter that occurred while the PCs were already down on resources.

Unimaginative? Could you please elaborate on how anything I said makes it sound "unimaginative" or what imagination has to do with how deadly an encounter is?


For the most part, he was right to complain, Not being able to build your own character can be horribly boring, and random misshaps on death which could go from nothing to get a debilitating disease is pretty bull****.

It might not be to your liking, but plenty of games, both public and house ruled, use these systems, so I guess everyone who enjoys these is having badwrongfun?

I don't know, if you agree to play with a set of house rules and don't bring up any concerns and then six weeks later start bitching that seems to be a problem to me.

Also, neither nothing nor debilitating disease were on the mishap table.


Snark aside though: To clarify, he did make his character, he just did it with words instead of numbers. What he is upset about is that, much like standard 5E point buy, he can't create a character with the absolute maximum or minimum scores in any of (or in his particular case all of) his attributes.

As for the random mishap table, it is something a lot of games use and it looked like fun, I was just trying it out for an experiment, but after he complained I pulled it after the first session.

zinycor
2018-12-22, 12:47 PM
I mean, I guess you could look at it that way.

Basically, they spent an entire session where they got no loot, no XP, didn't explore anything, didn't advance the plot, didn't make any net gain as far as making allies or social contacts, and worst of all didn't really have any fun (they seemed quite morose and regretful about having to kill their allies).

I mean, yeah, I guess we got to game, but when you only play six hours every two weeks it seems a shame to have a game where the players don't accomplish anything.



It was a deadly encounter that occurred while the PCs were already down on resources.

Unimaginative? Could you please elaborate on how anything I said makes it sound "unimaginative" or what imagination has to do with how deadly an encounter is?



It might not be to your liking, but plenty of games, both public and house ruled, use these systems, so I guess everyone who enjoys these is having badwrongfun?

I don't know, if you agree to play with a set of house rules and don't bring up any concerns and then six weeks later start bitching that seems to be a problem to me.

Also, neither nothing nor debilitating disease were on the mishap table.


Snark aside though: To clarify, he did make his character, he just did it with words instead of numbers. What he is upset about is that, much like standard 5E point buy, he can't create a character with the absolute maximum or minimum scores in any of (or in his particular case all of) his attributes.

As for the random mishap table, it is something a lot of games use and it looked like fun, I was just trying it out for an experiment, but after he complained I pulled it after the first session.

Nice to know the misshap table went away.
I Haven't found the post of it so I must ask, What happened at that session which involved no EXP, allies or anything? did the characters get together to play UNO?

Talakeal
2018-12-22, 04:47 PM
Nice to know the misshap table went away.
I Haven't found the post of it so I must ask, What happened at that session which involved no EXP, allies or anything? did the characters get together to play UNO?

Session one they made an alliance with some dragonborn, got xp for it.

The Next session they allied with some trolls, got xp for it, then went back and killed the dragonborn and got the dragonborn treasure, which they split with the trolls.

Next session they plan on going back and killing the trolls to get the trolls treasure as well as the trolls split of the dragonborns treasure.

So in effect they are taking three sessions to get the xp, exploration, and treasureof two sessions, and since all of their allies will be dead they havent made any diplomatic progress.

Not that I give milestone XP for clearing the dungeon, not for individual kills.

noob
2018-12-22, 05:11 PM
Session one they made an alliance with some dragonborn, got xp for it.

The Next session they allied with some trolls, got xp for it, then went back and killed the dragonborn and got the dragonborn treasure, which they split with the trolls.

Next session they plan on going back and killing the trolls to get the trolls treasure as well as the trolls split of the dragonborns treasure.

So in effect they are taking three sessions to get the xp, exploration, and treasureof two sessions, and since all of their allies will be dead they havent made any diplomatic progress.

Not that I give milestone XP for clearing the dungeon, not for individual kills.

It made the individual fights easier.
And if they did that in a short enough span nobody knows they are treacherous backstabber.

Talakeal
2018-12-22, 05:14 PM
It made the individual fights easier.
And if they did that in a short enough span nobody knows they are treacherous backstabber.

True, It made the fight with the dragonborn easier, but they weren't that tough to begin with, a speedbump encounter at best.

They are still going to be taking on the trolls at their full strength.

I am not worried about them getting a reputation as backstabbers, atleast not from these encounters. Althiugh in the long run their tendancy to backstab their allies might leave them at a severe disadvantage later on when they game gets into more kingdom level politics, not just because they have a bad reputation but because all of their allies are dead!

noob
2018-12-22, 05:42 PM
True, It made the fight with the dragonborn easier, but they weren't that tough to begin with, a speedbump encounter at best.

They are still going to be taking on the trolls at their full strength.

I am not worried about them getting a reputation as backstabbers, atleast not from these encounters. Althiugh in the long run their tendancy to backstab their allies might leave them at a severe disadvantage later on when they game gets into more kingdom level politics, not just because they have a bad reputation but because all of their allies are dead!

Well they might be taking the trolls by surprise and that surprise round can be an advantage.
On the other hand dead allies is not necessarily a problem as big as you can imagine: there is a spell called animate undead and you can with simulacrum have quite consequent amounts of undead under your control.(of course we will not talk about spawn controlling undead because that is even more broken than using some simulacrum to animate undead)
Or if they have actually non evil alignments they can spam create lantern archon and create undying (those are setting specific however) to have allies that are not under their control but which does not really wants to do stuff disruptive for human civilisation(except against evil human civilisations)
Or maybe they plan to start not killing people only once they make a redeemery.

geppetto
2018-12-22, 10:32 PM
The average level 1 wizard which dumped con would take a rat familiar and the great fortitude feat.(fortitude saves are one of the main saves so you better have to start by that) and that compensate the -4 penalty from the stats thus making you have a +0
Do you describe each commoner ever as sickly while all the commoners have +0 to their fortitude save?
Do you describe every expert of a level lower than 3 as sickly as they have +0 to their fortitude save?
Do you describe every noble of a level lower than 3 as sickly as they have +0 to their fortitude save?
No you do not.
Therefore inflicting that penalty to the wizard is just absurd and makes your entire world entirely inconsistent.
However if the wizard did also not go through the effort of picking a rat familiar and of picking the great fortitude feat then he will be sickly but it is a really dumb build since at low levels fortitude saves are needed a lot.(at high level you can have a buff stack making you immune to most things that needs a fortitude save and use polymorphing spells that override your stats or become a necropolitan and thus make constitution become a non issue)
Honestly why did he not dump charisma like a normal person: dumping charisma allows you to get extra opponents which is the main resource therefore dumping charisma is a positive thing and people tries to avoid effects that increase their charisma for that reason.
If you dump charisma hard enough you save time walking toward the bad guys: while you walk toward the king to take the mission to kill the bad guys the king, his guard and all the surrounding armies and villages tries to attack you immediately so you do not need to walk as much before the first opponents and you save time talking to the king(since he attacks you on sight you do not need to ask him where the bad guys are then you will loot the maps for war in the tactics room).
Dumping wisdom allows you to be insane and then confuse the gm but since will saves are one of the common saves it is inefficient.
Dumping str allows you to have an excuse for not carrying anything.


LOL any wizard who would waste a feat on great fortitude doesnt understand optimization well enough to be a risk to the game anyway. Just do him a favor and kill him off quick. Rocks fall or something painless.

And yes, anyone with a 3 CON is sickly

geppetto
2018-12-22, 10:40 PM
Also, even if it was realistic, it is still narratively unsatisfying and wasting everyone's time.


Its a game. If the players had fun then by definition thats simply not true. The only point of spending the time IS fun.

Talakeal
2018-12-22, 11:47 PM
Its a game. If the players had fun then by definition thats simply not true. The only point of spending the time IS fun.

They did not.

noob
2018-12-23, 03:44 AM
LOL any wizard who would waste a feat on great fortitude doesnt understand optimization well enough to be a risk to the game anyway. Just do him a favor and kill him off quick. Rocks fall or something painless.

And yes, anyone with a 3 CON is sickly

Optimisation is relative to a table.
Since fortitude saves are needed before you have immunity to those because you can not start as a necropolitan dumping constitution needs to be compensated in some way in order to have the right amounts of fortitude saves unless you are at a table with ninth level spells at level 1: at any lower amount of optimisation you might make fortitude saves at level 1 because without high level spell access you have no immunities to diseases at level 1 and you can not with level 1 spells reliably defeat on your initiative everything(you can defeat lots of things but not everything).
Also it is false that someone with 3 con is necessarily sickly: since sickness resistance is linked to stuff like disease immunity or fortitude saves it does not matters if you have 4332444 constitution or 3 constitution when fighting a disease if your fortitude save is fixed.
There is rules for disease resistance and it does use fortitude save and/or immunities and not con throws.

zinycor
2018-12-23, 11:52 AM
Session one they made an alliance with some dragonborn, got xp for it.

The Next session they allied with some trolls, got xp for it, then went back and killed the dragonborn and got the dragonborn treasure, which they split with the trolls.

Next session they plan on going back and killing the trolls to get the trolls treasure as well as the trolls split of the dragonborns treasure.

So in effect they are taking three sessions to get the xp, exploration, and treasureof two sessions, and since all of their allies will be dead they havent made any diplomatic progress.

Not that I give milestone XP for clearing the dungeon, not for individual kills.

That sounds amazing dude, You sure the players didn't have fun? and isn't betraying your allies a milestone?
What led them to betray their allies btw?

Am just surprised, how can you betray your allies and not have fun while doing so?

Talakeal
2018-12-23, 12:23 PM
That sounds amazing dude, You sure the players didn't have fun? and isn't betraying your allies a milestone?
What led them to betray their allies btw?

Am just surprised, how can you betray your allies and not have fun while doing so?

Are you serious?

The players do not enjoy imagining their characters betraying allies and murdering innocent women and children because they are not sadists and psychopaths.

No, they absolutely do not get milestone XP for random carnage; that is kind of the opposite of how milestone XP works. This is a sandbox game, their overall goal is to locate an artifact which is hidden somewhere in the region and eventually defend the region from invasion by a colonial foreign power. I give them milestone XP for exploring locations and for defeating or allying with certain powerful monsters who inhabit the region.


Apparently they believes that the trolls would be willing and able to abandon their current lair and live in a kobold warren some miles away and then they were shocked that the Trolls (raiders and cannibals) didn't get along with their new neighbors, a clan of dragonborn (who were fiercely territorial and self righteous and had been attempting a genocide on the kobolds that had previously lived in the warrens). When fighting broke out between the trolls and the dragonborn the PCs, who had taken a sacred oath to ally with the trolls but not with the dragonborn, helped the trolls wipe out their village, including the women and children.

Now they are planning to go back and kill the trolls to avenge the dragonborn.

zinycor
2018-12-23, 12:48 PM
Are you serious?

The players do not enjoy imagining their characters betraying allies and murdering innocent women and children because they are not sadists and psychopaths.

WTF? Dude this is a civil discussion, don't call people sadists or psycopaths over a game... Jesus.. What's wrong with you?


No, they absolutely do not get milestone XP for random carnage; that is kind of the opposite of how milestone XP works. This is a sandbox game, their overall goal is to locate an artifact which is hidden somewhere in the region and eventually defend the region from invasion by a colonial foreign power. I give them milestone XP for exploring locations and for defeating or allying with certain powerful monsters who inhabit the region.

Personally I also use the milestone system on my sandbox game, but I ask my players what are their goals for the session and I award experience based on the difficulty of said task. Betraying the dragonborn people fits perfectly there.



Apparently they believes that the trolls would be willing and able to abandon their current lair and live in a kobold warren some miles away and then they were shocked that the Trolls (raiders and cannibals) didn't get along with their new neighbors, a clan of dragonborn (who were fiercely territorial and self righteous and had been attempting a genocide on the kobolds that had previously lived in the warrens). When fighting broke out between the trolls and the dragonborn the PCs, who had taken a sacred oath to ally with the trolls but not with the dragonborn, helped the trolls wipe out their village, including the women and children.

Now they are planning to go back and kill the trolls to avenge the dragonborn.

This all seems fine. Is any of them a paladin? if not, then oaths and such don't really mean anything.

I guess some of the frustration can come from the difficulty. the players planned to betray the dragonborn, so they surely expected that to be a fun and difficult fight, and it wasn't. On the other hand, when they were down on resources, here comes a random encounter which is hard and challenging.

I believe that if you flipped both results, like Random encounters not being that hard and only meant to spend some resources, and planned battles being hard and depending on the players strategy and tactics. You would end up with players more satisfied.

Talakeal
2018-12-23, 02:00 PM
WTF? Dude this is a civil discussion, don't call people sadists or psycopaths over a game... Jesus.. What's wrong with you?

I am not calling anyone a psychopath.

I said that IF someone thinks that it is fun to spend an evening fantasizing about slaughtering non-combatants they have some serious issues.

My players and I DID NOT have fun because the game went in that direction.


This all seems fine. Is any of them a paladin? if not, then oaths and such don't really mean anything.

Paladins, no. They are all neutral, and after the session several of them did ask if I was going to force them to change to evil over what happened.

The oath was being enforced by the troll shaman's magic, a sort of modified Geas spell.



I guess some of the frustration can come from the difficulty. the players planned to betray the dragonborn, so they surely expected that to be a fun and difficult fight, and it wasn't. On the other hand, when they were down on resources, here comes a random encounter which is hard and challenging.

I believe that if you flipped both results, like Random encounters not being that hard and only meant to spend some resources, and planned battles being hard and depending on the players strategy and tactics. You would end up with players more satisfied.

They new the dragonborn's capabilities, there were only five combatants in the village and the PCs had fought alongside them before and knew they were no match for the party alone in a fight, let alone the party backed up by an entire tribe of trolls.

It was such a slaughter I didn't even roll any dice for it, and I am pretty sure if I had the players would not have enjoyed it and felt that I was rubbing it in, I might have even lost some players over it*.


Personally I also use the milestone system on my sandbox game, but I ask my players what are their goals for the session and I award experience based on the difficulty of said task. Betraying the dragonborn people fits perfectly there.

That was never their goal though, their goal was to explore the troll's lair and deal with the trolls, which they did and got XP for.

The dragonborn thing just came about in play because they backed themselves into a corner.



I guess some of the frustration can come from the difficulty. the players planned to betray the dragonborn, so they surely expected that to be a fun and difficult fight, and it wasn't. On the other hand, when they were down on resources, here comes a random encounter which is hard and challenging.

I believe that if you flipped both results, like Random encounters not being that hard and only meant to spend some resources, and planned battles being hard and depending on the players strategy and tactics. You would end up with players more satisfied.

The dragonborn were not anyway supposed to be a difficulty or climactic encounter, they were just a single fight in the middle of a dungeon.

The trolls would have been a challenging encounter for the PCs, but they chose not to fight them and instead ally with them.

As for random encounters not being hard, I mostly agree with you, but they rolled really badly on the random encounter chart. I have never seen a published random encounter chart that didn't have a few deadly fights on it, and I know the 3.5 DMG explicitly says that about 5% of all encounters should be extremely deadly.



*: About five years ago when I was running a game the party defeated a tribes warriors in combat, tracked them back to their village, and when I said there were no combatants left, only women, children, and the elderly and the players chose to slaughter them anyway. Two players left the group because they "play to feel like a hero, not a genocidal murderer."

zinycor
2018-12-23, 02:14 PM
I am not calling anyone a psychopath.

I said that IF someone thinks that it is fun to spend an evening fantasizing about slaughtering non-combatants they have some serious issues.

Then you are calling people who enjoy PLAYING characters that do such things Psycopaths. That's not cool dude


My players and I DID NOT have fun because the game went in that direction.



Paladins, no. They are all neutral, and after the session several of them did ask if I was going to force them to change to evil over what happened.

The oath was being enforced by the troll shaman's magic, a sort of modified Geas spell.




They new the dragonborn's capabilities, there were only five combatants in the village and the PCs had fought alongside them before and knew they were no match for the party alone in a fight, let alone the party backed up by an entire tribe of trolls.

It was such a slaughter I didn't even roll any dice for it, and I am pretty sure if I had the players would not have enjoyed it and felt that I was rubbing it in, I might have even lost some players over it*.



That was never their goal though, their goal was to explore the troll's lair and deal with the trolls, which they did and got XP for.

The dragonborn thing just came about in play because they backed themselves into a corner.




The dragonborn were not anyway supposed to be a difficulty or climactic encounter, they were just a single fight in the middle of a dungeon.

The trolls would have been a challenging encounter for the PCs, but they chose not to fight them and instead ally with them.

As for random encounters not being hard, I mostly agree with you, but they rolled really badly on the random encounter chart. I have never seen a published random encounter chart that didn't have a few deadly fights on it, and I know the 3.5 DMG explicitly says that about 5% of all encounters should be extremely deadly.



*: About five years ago when I was running a game the party defeated a tribes warriors in combat, tracked them back to their village, and when I said there were no combatants left, only women, children, and the elderly and the players chose to slaughter them anyway. Two players left the group because they "play to feel like a hero, not a genocidal murderer."

I really don't understand this... A bunch of Dragonborn are attempting to genocide kobolds, the party kills them... and they feel bad over it??

Anyway, the problem seems to be that your world operates in shade of gray morality, which demands by its very nature, solutions which aren't simple. Maybe your group would be happier with simpler quests. Like instead of the Dragonborn being fiercely territorial and self righteous and had been attempting a genocide on the kobolds that had previously lived in the warren... the dragonborn were a tribe of goodpeople that had many problems with trolls and kodolds and were in the run from them.

As you presented the dragonborn here, I don't see any problem in defeating them...

Besides if the party didn't want to do this and felt so bad about it... Why did they do it?

Quertus
2018-12-23, 02:50 PM
I have no problem with fight monsters get loot, but when the players go to all the trouble of befriending monsters and THEN killing them for loot it seems like it wastes everyones time as well as making for a strange and inconsistent narrative / morality.


Basically, they spent an entire session where they got no loot, no XP, didn't explore anything, didn't advance the plot, didn't make any net gain as far as making allies or social contacts, and worst of all didn't really have any fun (they seemed quite morose and regretful about having to kill their allies).

I mean, yeah, I guess we got to game, but when you only play six hours every two weeks it seems a shame to have a game where the players don't accomplish anything.


Its a game. If the players had fun then by definition thats simply not true. The only point of spending the time IS fun.


They did not.

Consider asking the players what a fun version of that game would have looked like. I doubt "treasure", "XP", or "wasting time" will be at the top of their list of changes, but you never know.


I said that IF someone thinks that it is fun to spend an evening fantasizing about slaughtering non-combatants they have some serious issues.

My players and I DID NOT have fun because the game went in that direction.


The oath was being enforced by the troll shaman's magic, a sort of modified Geas spell.

The trolls would have been a challenging encounter for the PCs, but they chose not to fight them and instead ally with them.

*: About five years ago when I was running a game the party defeated a tribes warriors in combat, tracked them back to their village, and when I said there were no combatants left, only women, children, and the elderly and the players chose to slaughter them anyway. Two players left the group because they "play to feel like a hero, not a genocidal murderer."

OK, so I'm not normally a fan of "just choose differently", believing that most proponents the theory are just putting their ignorance of role-playing on display. But this? This was a good opportunity for you to just choose differently.

Maybe the Dragon born saw what was going to happen, and fled. Maybe they had some magic of their own to counter the party's oaths. Maybe the trolls didn't ask for the magical oaths. Maybe someone pointed out the problems with the plan before they came to a head. Maybe the Troll Shaman used Divinations regarding the players' plans - even simple yes/no answers would have them know that they can't stay here, and they can't go there, so, gasp, plot hook for which hex they can survive in!

There are so many ways that you could have just chosen differently to not reenact your previous horror story, but you... didn't.

Let's look at this from the players' perspective. They do their best to make allies - commendable, and a good tactic, especially if they know where the campaign is going. They have the clever tactic to simultaneously solve the "location" problem of the raiding trolls, and consolidate their powerbase.

OK so far. But how does the GM respond?

Well, the first set of allies are useless. The second set? He paints the PCs into a corner with magical oaths, forcing them to engage in horrifically horrific and unheroic actions. And, to make this happen, the GM uses the figleaf of "realism" and "dungeon ecology". I mean, seriously, in what but the most Simulationist of games has Dungeon Ecology ever made any sense? Also, how many monsters did the PCs eliminate from that dungeon -> just how many creatures was it reasonable for them to suspect that it could support?

So, rather than give a group of players who are unfamiliar with your style a satisfying story of gathering allies, you instead force them down a path that you know from past experience to be quit-worthy.

Congratulations, you're an internet GM horror story. :smalleek:

Or, at least, that's my current suspicion as to the source of your players' unhappiness.

Talakeal
2018-12-23, 03:13 PM
Well, the first set of allies are useless. The second set? He paints the PCs into a corner with magical oaths, forcing them to engage in horrifically horrific and unheroic actions. And, to make this happen, the GM uses the figleaf of "realism" and "dungeon ecology". I mean, seriously, in what but the most Simulationist of games has Dungeon Ecology ever made any sense? Also, how many monsters did the PCs eliminate from that dungeon -> just how many creatures was it reasonable for them to suspect that it could support?

So, rather than give a group of players who are unfamiliar with your style a satisfying story of gathering allies, you instead force them down a path that you know from past experience to be quit-worthy.

Congratulations, you're an internet GM horror story. :smalleek:

Or, at least, that's my current suspicion as to the source of your players' unhappiness.

The dragonborn weren't "useless" they were a solid squad of soldiers, they just weren't as strong as the party, and certainly not able to stand a chance against the party plus a gang of trolls that, in a straight fight, were significantly stronger than the party.

The kobolds were typical kobolds, cowardly and sadistic.

The dragon born were portrayed as lawful stupid types, intolerant and violent towards evil, and proud and stubborn to a fault. (If the PCs had decided to attack them in the first place I wouldn't have seen anything wrong about it... slaughtering their young maybe though.)

The trolls were presented as being a band of cannibalistic raiders who captured travelers and nearby homesteaders and ate them and their families. That was WHY the PCs were going to go out and kill the trolls.

So having the dragonborn flee or go out of their way to make peace with the trolls would have been wildly out of character for them. Likewise having the trolls not attack the dragonborn or not kill their civilians would have been wildly out of character for the trolls.

Also, the dragonborn made a big point of not having enough food. They told the PCs they were welcome to stay with them, and even take treasure from their territory, but they could not feed the PCs as they were struggling to find enough food for themselves. They were slowly dying and living in the ruins of what was once a glorious civilization, and one of the children the PCs befriended in their village while staying their told them that this place was not a good habitat anymore, there simply wasn't enough food and the dragonborn would die out in a few generations if they stayed here, but they were simply too proud and stubborn to abandon their ancestral homeland.

The dragonborn weren't presented as having any magic, but I don't know, if the players had talked to them they might have been able to work something out. But I seriously don't know how I would have initiated that even if I had thought about it. They could probably have worked something out if they had gone that way.

The trolls absolutely DID use divination magic to verify the PCs story. In fact, the only reason they insisted on magical oaths, and the players knew this, is because when they used divination to find out if the PCs planned to betray them the answer came back unclear (because OOC the players themselves didn't know if they were planning on betraying the trolls).

The two players who were making the decisions have been gaming with me for decades, they know my style.

Also, I gave them numerous options to simply bow out and leave, especially when the trolls went to sack the village and kill the civilians. I asked them multiple times if they wanted to go through with this and they said yes.

Again, this is one of those cases where online and in person experience wildly differ. If I simply say "No," when the players want to slaughter civilians I am taking away player agency, but if I give them the option I am a "horror story," I really don't see a solution to this aside from making a fantasy world where everyone is a warrior and the next generation simply springs out of the ground fully trained and armed.

Or find players who would never consider slaughtering civilians, but... yeah, good luck with that.

Talakeal
2018-12-23, 03:20 PM
Anyway, the problem seems to be that your world operates in shade of gray morality, which demands by its very nature, solutions which aren't simple. Maybe your group would be happier with simpler quests. Like instead of the Dragonborn being fiercely territorial and self righteous and had been attempting a genocide on the kobolds that had previously lived in the warren... the dragonborn were a tribe of goodpeople that had many problems with trolls and kodolds and were in the run from them.

I agree there. The dragonborn were pretty shades of gray, the PCs shouldn't have felt bad about killing their warriors. Going back to their village and slaughtering the children though, that is pretty messed up.

The trolls and kobolds were both pretty clearly evil though.


The PCs had a simple quest, kill the trolls. For some reason they wanted to ally with them instead. This totally blindsided me, but the PCs were already getting stressed out that simply running up to them and shouting "ROLL DIPLOMACY GIVE LOOT AND BE NO MORE EVIL!" didn't work, so I was trying to cut them a break and have the trolls be as accommodating as they could be without being suicidally stupid and lining up for a PC ambush.

zinycor
2018-12-23, 03:28 PM
I agree there. The dragonborn were pretty shades of gray, the PCs shouldn't have felt bad about killing their warriors. Going back to their village and slaughtering the children though, that is pretty messed up.

The trolls and kobolds were both pretty clearly evil though.


The PCs had a simple quest, kill the trolls. For some reason they wanted to ally with them instead. This totally blindsided me, but the PCs were already getting stressed out that simply running up to them and shouting "ROLL DIPLOMACY GIVE LOOT AND BE NO MORE EVIL!" didn't work, so I was trying to cut them a break and have the trolls be as accommodating as they could be without being suicidally stupid and lining up for a PC ambush.

You missed my comment on your views on people who play in ways you don't like.

The Dragonborn were also evil, afterall you used the word genocide.
Why weren't the trolls suicidally stupid again? Did they miss a roll or something?

Talakeal
2018-12-23, 03:51 PM
You missed my comment on your views on people who play in ways you don't like.

I was intentionally trying to drop that tangent as it was almost certainly going to lead this thread into places that are against the forum rules, but if you want to force the issue let me clarify:

It wasn't about playing games in "way's I don't like," it was a comment about people who find imagining to slaughter children to be "fun."

Note that I am specifically talking about fun, not narratively satisfying, or emotionally cathartic, or an unfortunate side effect of a how events are playing out, specifically "fun.".


Why weren't the trolls suicidally stupid again? Did they miss a roll or something?

You pulling my leg bro?

Are you seriously telling me that the default state for a shaman who is a practiced diviner and wise enough to lead a clan for generations should need to make a roll to avoid leading her people into an obvious ambush?


The Dragonborn were also evil, afterall you used the word genocide.

I disagree, as do the printed rules of dungeons and dragons. Attempting to wipe out evil creatures is not necessarily itself an evil act, although it is certainly morally gray.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-12-23, 06:35 PM
I am not calling anyone a psychopath.

I said that IF someone thinks that it is fun to spend an evening fantasizing about slaughtering non-combatants they have some serious issues.

What a weird thing to say. That's just, like, your opinion, man.

1337 b4k4
2018-12-23, 06:46 PM
My players and I DID NOT have fun because the game went in that direction.


So then why did the game go that direction? If this wasn't something the players wanted to do, who suggested doing so in the first place and who encouraged the rest of the players to go along with it.

I don't suppose it was your min-maxer was it?


On another note, I'm not quite sure you are on the same page as your players with respect to what a sandbox game is going to look like. Generally in a sandbox, you're not going to have an overarching plot to advance, so sessions that don't "advance the plot" don't really hurt anything. In individual sessions or small spans of sessions there may be a minor plot as they explore a particular adventure hook, but overall there isn't a plot to be advanced.

Which also leads me to wondering why you use milestone XP, especially if your players don't have individual character goals. In a sandbox, you're probably better off using some "per session" or "XP for GP" or "XP for body count" style of xp reward. Milestone xp systems don't make a lot of sense when there aren't milestones and a path upon which to place them.

Talakeal
2018-12-23, 08:49 PM
So then why did the game go that direction? If this wasn't something the players wanted to do, who suggested doing so in the first place and who encouraged the rest of the players to go along with it.

I don't suppose it was your min-maxer was it?.

No, it wasn't the min-maxxer, although he is the one who wants to go back and kill the trolls next session.

It was the socially awkward party face. Basically, the party was sent out to kill a tribe of evil man-eating trolls. He decided to collect tribute from them instead, and the trolls said no.

Then he bitched at my that social skills were worthless in my game, and I explained that social skills are about a bargain, not simply a one sided concession. So he decided to form an alliance with the evil man-eating trolls.

I then proceded to RP the evil man-eating trolls and evil man-eating trolls, and they took the party with them to do evil man-eating troll things, and at no point did the PCs ever stop and question anything until after the fact where they were all bummed at having taken part in evil man-eating hijinks.


On another note, I'm not quite sure you are on the same page as your players with respect to what a sandbox game is going to look like. Generally in a sandbox, you're not going to have an overarching plot to advance, so sessions that don't "advance the plot" don't really hurt anything. In individual sessions or small spans of sessions there may be a minor plot as they explore a particular adventure hook, but overall there isn't a plot to be advanced.

Which also leads me to wondering why you use milestone XP, especially if your players don't have individual character goals. In a sandbox, you're probably better off using some "per session" or "XP for GP" or "XP for body count" style of xp reward. Milestone xp systems don't make a lot of sense when there aren't milestones and a path upon which to place them.

I may be overstating with words like "mile-stone" and "over-arching plot." My point is that I am not using XP for kills, and simply slaughtering people for the heck of it is not a way to level up in this game.

Basically the PCs are exploring a region and, ostensibly, trying to make it safe for the inhabitants of their home city.

The "mile-stones" are twenty points of interest which the PCs get XP for exploring and twenty legendary monsters which the PCs get XP for killing (or driving off, incapacitating, making peace with, etc.). The revenant that caused the TPK was one of the latter.

As for an over-arching plot, basically there is "lore" about the region and NPCs have secret motivations, histories, and alliances which the PCs can pick up on. Eventually, after the region is fully explored, several global powers are going to play their hand an attempt to invade or influence the region and the game will, ideally, switch to a larger scale political one, but at this point there are really just a few hints foreshadowing what is to come, not really a "plot" per se.

zinycor
2018-12-24, 07:04 AM
I was intentionally trying to drop that tangent as it was almost certainly going to lead this thread into places that are against the forum rules, but if you want to force the issue let me clarify:

It wasn't about playing games in "way's I don't like," it was a comment about people who find imagining to slaughter children to be "fun."

Note that I am specifically talking about fun, not narratively satisfying, or emotionally cathartic, or an unfortunate side effect of a how events are playing out, specifically "fun.".
Fine, I'll just have faith that you didn't mean to disrespect people you don't know




You pulling my leg bro?

Are you seriously telling me that the default state for a shaman who is a practiced diviner and wise enough to lead a clan for generations should need to make a roll to avoid leading her people into an obvious ambush?
Why wouldn't he? He is a troll who are tipically stupid, did you tell them about this wise divider before the encounter? If not, why do the trolls have one? You could have easily be ignored it. If you did, well no wonder they wanted to talk to the trolls, I wouldn't want to face wise espellcasting trolls either.




I disagree, as do the printed rules of dungeons and dragons. Attempting to wipe out evil creatures is not necessarily itself an evil act, although it is certainly morally gray.
I thought you were playing a modified version of 5e, which doesn't have that rule.

The more I read about this, the more it seems like you didn't give your players enough options. And the sole reason behind the dragonborn getting slaughtered was because the trolls had access to a powerful caster able to cast geas, which isn't their fault at all.

noob
2018-12-24, 08:18 AM
And afterwards wanting to kill the trolls is logical: they were everything but allies: allies are not people mind controlling you.

zinycor
2018-12-24, 09:35 AM
And afterwards wanting to kill the trolls is logical: they were everything but allies: allies are not people mind controlling you.

Absolutely agree.

LankyOgre
2018-12-24, 10:20 AM
I am going to toss out that there could also be a pretty big legitimate disconnect in expectations from social skills. The 5e skills descriptions don't necessarily say you have to do more than "I use persuasion."
Rather than emphasizing the futility of just saying "I persuade" focus on the fact that a single skill check likely won't completely rewrite the troll's entire personality.

Talakeal
2018-12-24, 10:51 AM
And afterwards wanting to kill the trolls is logical: they were everything but allies: allies are not people mind controlling you.

A few things:

First: It may be logical, but it is still a waste of time and effort; it will be know easier to kill the trolls now than it would have been in the first place.

Second: Evil or not, the trolls are legitimately their allies at this point, and having a tribe of trolls could be extremely helpful in the future.

Third: It wasn't technically mind-control. I said it was a modified Gaes, the actual effects of which are that either side takes some psychic damage if they attack the other in the mountain.

Fourth: The PCs voluntarily agreed to take a mystical oath.

Fifth: I am not sure if I agree with that premise. I can think of many situations where you would want to be mind controlled by an ally, and I don't think its weird to have something that verifies the loyalty of a potential new ally who has yet to prove their motivations.

Sixth: It did go both ways. Every one of the trolls also took the oath and suffers the exact same effects should they betray the party.


Why wouldn't he? He is a troll who are tipically stupid, did you tell them about this wise divider before the encounter? If not, why do the trolls have one? You could have easily be ignored it. If you did, well no wonder they wanted to talk to the trolls, I wouldn't want to face wise espellcasting trolls either.

The trolls where always led by a powerful shaman; I actually created the dungeon well before any of the players even signed onto the campaign, and that was always the idea.

I don't recall if the players knew this before approaching the trolls entirely, but they certainly knew this before entering their domain, when they first tried to talk to the troll lookouts they were told that they would need to speak with the shaman before an alliance could be made, and the PCs asked to be brought to the shaman.

Are you seriously saying that because a monster's leader has character levels the PCs should be quaking in their boots and hesitant about the whole adventure? Because that is the case with pretty much every adventure I have ever run, played in, or module I read through, so that seems like a pretty weird statement.


I thought you were playing a modified version of 5e, which doesn't have that rule.

I will have to take your word for it that it isn't a rule in 5E. I know for a fact good characters can slay evil characters to their heart's content in 1E-3.5E, but I am afb at the moment so I don't know what 5E has to say about it. I assume that it is silent about the issue one way or the other though, leading it up to the DM to decide.

I personally don't enforce alignment as anything more than a guide line. But I do recognize that there is a distinction "fanatical guy who slays evil without mercy" and "sadist who kills anyone weaker than them for fun".

I did not say it was 5E, I said it was like E6. I am playing a simplified version of my own Heart of Darkness system which has designed to teach beginners who are new to RPGs.

Heart of Darkness is a streamlined d20 game that is the same general rules and themes as D&D, although it has gothic and western elements to the setting (think Stephen King's dark tower series) and rather than having strict classes character creation is a bit more freeform (think Exalted). But for the purposes of a story like this if you think of it as 3E D&D played at the lower-mid levels of (both literal levels and optimization) that should work fine.

zinycor
2018-12-24, 11:12 AM
I really don't get this Talakeal, You say neither you nor your players had fun, which you recognize as a problem. But, at the same time, you don't see you doing anything wrong, even when pointed out to you.


A few things:

First: It may be logical, but it is still a waste of time and effort; it will be know easier to kill the trolls now than it would have been in the first place.

Players don't know the consequences of their ations before taking them, Silly of you to point this out.


Second: Evil or not, the trolls are legitimately their allies at this point, and having a tribe of trolls could be extremely helpful in the future.

As far as I understand the situation, the players don't want to kill the trolls becasue of their lack of utility, but because of the horrible acts they commited


Third: It wasn't technically mind-control. I said it was a modified Gaes, the actual effects of which are that either side takes some psychic damage if they attack the other in the mountain.


Fourth: The PCs voluntarily agreed to take a mystical oath.

Sixth: It did go both ways. Every one of the trolls also took the oath and suffers the exact same effects should they betray the party.

Doesn't make it any better. Now the players are guilty of having helped the trolls under threat of damage


Fifth: I am not sure if I agree with that premise. I can think of many situations where you would want to be mind controlled by an ally, and I don't think its weird to have something that verifies the loyalty of a potential new ally who has yet to prove their motivations.


I can't think of any situations where I would like to be mind crontrolled, I can think of several where I would rather die than being mind controlled.



The trolls where always led by a powerful shaman; I actually created the dungeon well before any of the players even signed onto the campaign, and that was always the idea.

I don't recall if the players knew this before approaching the trolls entirely, but they certainly knew this before entering their domain, when they first tried to talk to the troll lookouts they were told that they would need to speak with the shaman before an alliance could be made, and the PCs asked to be brought to the shaman.

Are you seriously saying that because a monster's leader has character levels the PCs should be quaking in their boots and hesitant about the whole adventure? Because that is the case with pretty much every adventure I have ever run, played in, or module I read through, so that seems like a pretty weird statement.

(emphasis mine) Well, yeah, that's pretty much how I act whenever i face a monster with class levels, specially one that can cast spells as incredible as a modifed version of Geass.


I will have to take your word for it that it isn't a rule in 5E. I know for a fact good characters can slay evil characters to their heart's content in 1E-3.5E, but I am afb at the moment so I don't know what 5E has to say about it. I assume that it is silent about the issue one way or the other though, leading it up to the DM to decide.

I personally don't enforce alignment as anything more than a guide line. But I do recognize that there is a distinction "fanatical guy who slays evil without mercy" and "sadist who kills anyone weaker than them for fun".

I did not say it was 5E, I said it was like E6. I am playing a simplified version of my own Heart of Darkness system which has designed to teach beginners who are new to RPGs.

Heart of Darkness is a streamlined d20 game that is the same general rules and themes as D&D, although it has gothic and western elements to the setting (think Stephen King's dark tower series) and rather than having strict classes character creation is a bit more freeform (think Exalted). But for the purposes of a story like this if you think of it as 3E D&D played at the lower-mid levels of (both literal levels and optimization) that should work fine.

My bad, however you might want to talk to your players about these moral issues, I know my table would not be okay with good characters doing genocide.

LankyOgre
2018-12-24, 11:44 AM
This sounds like a case where the players really have no idea what to expect from any of their actions and are just blindly making random declarations and hoping you let them know what to do.

zinycor
2018-12-24, 11:53 AM
This sounds like a case where the players really have no idea what to expect from any of their actions and are just blindly making random declarations and hoping you let them know what to do.

Which is pretty normal for new players

Talakeal
2018-12-24, 12:08 PM
This sounds like a case where the players really have no idea what to expect from any of their actions and are just blindly making random declarations and hoping you let them know what to do.


I really don't get this Talakeal, You say neither you nor your players had fun, which you recognize as a problem. But, at the same time, you don't see you doing anything wrong, even when pointed out to you.

Ok, so the situation is my players did something really weird and random which they regret doing.

I personally think it was because I put the one socially awkward player on the spot, he came up with a stupid plan on the fly, and then everyone was too proud to back down or just didn't want to speak out because they thought it would upset me or their fellow players.

I don't think it was because of any of the perfectly innocuous campaign design decisions and house rules that people are pointing out in this thread; but that is pretty common on forums. Something weird happens, forum people try and find an explanation, and up picking apart every little facet of the campaign even when they are completely unrelated, and the OP gets defensive, it is a cycle I have seen (and participated in) many times before.

I think I did three things wrong:

1: Not stopping the game and waiting for everyone to calm down when the player became frustrated at his failure to use social skills.
2: Not having a longer session 0 where I try and get the players to clearly come up with and discuss motivations for their characters and the party as a whole.
3: Valuing world consistency and verisimilitude over fun in the moment.

Although for the case of number three that is less of a mistake and more of a DMing style; and I personally believe in the long run letting the players know that their decisions actually have weight rather than me simply giving them the illusion of choice will eventually make the game more fun for everyone; but I know there are many other schools of DMing that will disagree.



As far as I understand the situation, the players don't want to kill the trolls becasue of their lack of utility, but because of the horrible acts they committed

I agree, but the trolls never changed character, they were committing horrible acts in the first place, which is why the PCs were sent out to kill them to begin with.

It just seems really weird that the players chose to help the trolls commit said horrible acts and now they want to go back and kill them like they planned to do in the first place.

Yes, chose, the players could have actively worked to subvert the trolls or even just left, the spell that stops the PCs from attacking the trolls works both ways, and would have protected the PCs from the troll's attacks if they had just decided to support the dragonborn or smuggle the children out of their village while the warriors defended it.


I can't think of any situations where I would like to be mind controlled, I can think of several where I would rather die than being mind controlled.

That really depends on the character and the situation.

I have had characters who would refuse mind control on principal, but there are legitimate tactical reasons to accept being put under mind control.

For example, I imagine in real life if you could come up with a method to mind control people into giving up smoking (or any other harmful addiction) people would voluntarily sign up for it by the bus load.

But again, this wasn't mind control. It was conditional psychic damage.


(emphasis mine) Well, yeah, that's pretty much how I act whenever i face a monster with class levels, specially one that can cast spells as incredible as a modifed version of Geass.

That's pretty odd. Monsters with class levels are a pretty standard feature of the game. They also exist for the sake of customization rather than power, a troll with caster levels is actually weaker than simply putting in one of the plethora of monsters that has innate spell casting.

For the record, the troll in question was no stronger a spell caster than the party sorceress, and the modified geas was actually weaker than a standard geas (psychic damage rather than forbiddance) which she would not have been able to cast.

Quertus
2018-12-24, 01:17 PM
Ah, I thought you had said something about new job, moving, new players. I guess I was having issues with my senility.

So, were either of your veteran players involved in your previous quit-worthy event?

Talakeal
2018-12-24, 02:04 PM
Ah, I thought you had said something about new job, moving, new players. I guess I was having issues with my senility.

So, were either of your veteran players involved in your previous quit-worthy event?

I did you are correct. I recently moved from the middle of nowhere back to the big city where I know people.

They were at the table but they were not directly involved, they neither made the decision to slaughter civilians nor did they quit brcause of it.

Cluedrew
2018-12-24, 06:40 PM
I am not calling anyone a psychopath.

I said that IF someone thinks that it is fun to spend an evening fantasizing about slaughtering non-combatants they have some serious issues.What a weird thing to say. That's just, like, your opinion, man.I mean, maybe the issue is not "is a psychopath", but I think that is an issue of some kind. Best case I can think of is they are horrible people without combat training and one needs to vent internally. I hope the final solution after the venting its a bit more... refined.

Florian
2018-12-24, 07:51 PM
My first assumption would actually be that they're waiting for input/the plot. Similiar to playing a video game and having no clue, you start with the diplomacy option, then go for the puzzle/quest option and then you kill them and take their stuff, because you don't know what else to do.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-12-24, 09:39 PM
I mean, maybe the issue is not "is a psychopath", but I think that is an issue of some kind. Best case I can think of is they are horrible people without combat training and one needs to vent internally. I hope the final solution after the venting its a bit more... refined.

Or alternatively... the point of roleplaying is to explore being people who aren't you that do things you would never do, for good or for ill. Frankly, if we're pointing fingers at people, the "self insert power fantasy" type players creep me out way more.

Cluedrew
2018-12-24, 10:06 PM
To Koo Rehtorb: I mean I have done that, but if you listen really closely* I switch from "I" to "[character name]" when that sort of stuff happens. I don't like the idea of me doing it. And Ammanda is one of my favourite characters, but I don't want to be her. And the really dark characters it is to set up something later. And I don't role-play them, but I write stories about them.

For power-fantasy characters, I would say it has more to do with what they do with that power. Being the big hero is a bit shallow, but not a problem. The worst I have seen was more of an issue in terms of group dynamics than any moral problems. On the other hand I have read gamer tale threads, it goes much further down.

* In some hypothetical situation where we are gaming at the same table.

Talakeal
2018-12-24, 10:40 PM
Or alternatively... the point of roleplaying is to explore being people who aren't you that do things you would never do, for good or for ill. Frankly, if we're pointing fingers at people, the "self insert power fantasy" type players creep me out way more.

And I see nothing wrong with exploring dark themes, I do it all the time.

What I am taking exception to is the idea that doing so is "fun,".

Its the difference between saying "Schindler's List is one of the greatest movies ever made, and I think everyone should see it at least once." vs. "Schindler's list is a really fun movie, I think you will really have a blast watching it!"

And now that I have Godwinned my own thread, I really wish we could drop this line of discussion before we derail the thread any further or get it into locking territory. Maybe we should pick up this conversation the next time someone brings up FATAL and the people who play it?



Edit: Although, having thought about the issue a little more, I suppose there is a place for dark humor that is funny because it is treating something horrific as comical, and I guess that qualifies as "having a fun time imagining atrocities," but I think that I personally take RPGs a little too seriously to ever get that kind of enjoyment out of one.

Cluedrew
2018-12-25, 09:03 AM
OK, back to the main topic then.

I think one of the issues is everyone is playing on a reaction loop. This goes into GM-driven vs. PC-driven games (despite some disagreements, I maintain both exist). GM-driven games the main plot is created by existing elements in the setting and active threats. Quest givers and plot hooks get the PCs involved. PC-/player-driven games the main plot is created by the PCs individual motivations. The world is more static and they go out and try to impose their will on it.

But with neither of these things happening, no side is really aiming for anything, so no one else has anything to react to and we end up with meaningless little movements that people don't care enough to think through and then things get out of hand and... yeah. I don't have any major tips for fixing it, besides the high level view of a conversation about "what do you want to do in this campaign".

Koo Rehtorb
2018-12-26, 01:25 AM
And I see nothing wrong with exploring dark themes, I do it all the time.

What I am taking exception to is the idea that doing so is "fun,".

So... it's okay to play bad people, so long as you don't have fun doing it?

zinycor
2018-12-26, 09:36 AM
So... it's okay to play bad people, so long as you don't have fun doing it?

Talakeal seems to have very weird values. Personally I have had a lot of fun playing absolute monsters, I have also been the GM to players who play their characters as absolute and irredeemable *******s and laugh about it.

That is all good and well, because I play with adults who understand that we are playing a game, and our characters don't reflect anything on us.

But apparently there are people who aren't as mature.

Talakeal
2018-12-26, 10:37 AM
I am sorry I offended you guys. I never meant to thought police or armchair psychoanalyze anyone.

Now could we please just quit with the name calling and drop it?

Edit: Also, let me state that this has nothing to do with morality. There is absolutely nothing that you can think or imagine that is "wrong." The things that people imagine might be strange or say something about them as a person, but until they cross over into actions they cannot be immoral or wrong.

zinycor
2018-12-26, 10:58 AM
That is pretty much the definition of sadism, yes.

"A sadist is someone who enjoys inflicting pain on others, sometimes in a sexual sense. Sadists like seeing other people hurt. A sadist is the opposite of a masochist, who enjoys being in pain. A sadist is all about hurting others, usually to get off sexually. However, this word is about more than sex."

At no point refers to the concepts of game, fun or role-playing. Not to mention that someone who plays a sadist on a role-playing game isn't inflicting pain to any person, just NPCs.


I am sorry I offended you guys. I never meant to thought police or armchair psychoanalyze anyone.

Now could we please just quit with the name calling and drop it?

You are the one who started the name calling, but ok.

Cluedrew
2018-12-26, 06:34 PM
I think there is a good conversation there, but I don't think this is the place for it. In any case I would like to bring attention back to my previous post, where I covered a theory about why this might be happening:


I think one of the issues is everyone is playing on a reaction loop. This goes into GM-driven vs. PC-driven games (despite some disagreements, I maintain both exist). GM-driven games the main plot is created by existing elements in the setting and active threats. Quest givers and plot hooks get the PCs involved. PC-/player-driven games the main plot is created by the PCs individual motivations. The world is more static and they go out and try to impose their will on it.

But with neither of these things happening, no side is really aiming for anything, so no one else has anything to react to and we end up with meaningless little movements that people don't care enough to think through and then things get out of hand and... yeah. I don't have any major tips for fixing it, besides the high level view of a conversation about "what do you want to do in this campaign".

Does that seem right Talakeal?

Talakeal
2018-12-26, 11:27 PM
I think there is a good conversation there, but I don't think this is the place for it. In any case I would like to bring attention back to my previous post, where I covered a theory about why this might be happening:



Does that seem right Talakeal?

Pretty much yeah.

Talakeal
2018-12-28, 10:13 AM
So, game update:

We had another session and it went ok, but the PCs didn't really have a direction. They got to a humanoid village and simply couldn't decide if they wanted to approach it to trade, raid it, ignore it, or come in offering to be heroes. So they just kind of wandered around until I shoved a metaphorical hook down their throats and then we had a fairly standard session.

Still planning on having an in depth and much delayed session zero before we play again tomorrow.


Unfortunately, there appears to be some drama not directly related to the game. One of the players thinks one of the other players is hitting on during the gaming sessions and we may have to kick him from the group.



"A sadist is someone who enjoys inflicting pain on others, sometimes in a sexual sense. Sadists like seeing other people hurt. A sadist is the opposite of a masochist, who enjoys being in pain. A sadist is all about hurting others, usually to get off sexually. However, this word is about more than sex."

At no point refers to the concepts of game, fun or role-playing. Not to mention that someone who plays a sadist on a role-playing game isn't inflicting pain to any person, just NPCs.



You are the one who started the name calling, but ok.

I was responding to Koo's point about how it is "only wrong if you have fun," and I was pointing out that sadism is about enjoying inflicting pain, not the act of inflicting pain itself. But yes, I agree that it doesn't say anything about pretending, and and as I pointed out, I never said anything about wrong, and I decided that I wanted to just let the subject die, so I deleted the post. Very quick quoting on your part!


I never called anyone a name, I just said what my players were not. But yes, I posted it in a flippant manner and for that I apologize sincerely. In retrospect I see how one could easily infer that I was calling them a name, indeed I would have edited it out pretty soon after posting except I was spending Christmas with my family and they kept telling me to put my tablet away. So yes, I am sorry that I offended you.

zinycor
2018-12-28, 03:05 PM
It's ok, things like tone get lost on writing, so casual remarks get taken seriously.

As for your table, maybe just focus on simpler adventures, and try to bend some rules of your world to benefit your players. At least until you and they feel like they are ready for a more hardcore experience.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 10:50 AM
We had another session, it went pretty well, standard dungeon crawl, kill the monsters loot the treasure, no **** ups or screw jobs.

Then we had a "session 0.5" after the game and came to the following conclusions:

Two of the 5 players changed their alignments from good to neutral (of the other three two were already neutral).

They decided they did want to defend their city, if not its current leadership, and were strongly loyal to their family*. They would be on the lookout for potential allies in the future and would be honoring their deal with the trolls for now, although they are going to try and find a way to break the Geas and channel the trolls into something more positive.

They think that what happened with the trolls is that there were a bunch of little misunderstandings or misrememberings on their part so that by the time they fully understood what was happening it was too late. When the one player said "lizard men" most of the other players honestly thought he was talking about some other dungeon that they had simply forgotten about.

They feel bad about killing children, although there was some debate about what constituted a child (probably a separate thread in that).



The sorcrerer player has dropped rebuilding her as super min-maxxed (for now), however he no longer wants to be a support character and is going to be a full blaster from now on, and says that the party is entitled to an NPC buff bot as it is an essential role for party balance but nobody wants to actually play one. Which is a more crunchy topic and I think worthy of a separate thread.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 03:23 PM
We had another session, it went pretty well, standard dungeon crawl, kill the monsters loot the treasure, no **** ups or screw jobs.

Then we had a "session 0.5" after the game and came to the following conclusions:

Two of the 5 players changed their alignments from good to neutral (of the other three two were already neutral).

They decided they did want to defend their city, if not its current leadership, and were strongly loyal to their family*. They would be on the lookout for potential allies in the future and would be honoring their deal with the trolls for now, although they are going to try and find a way to break the Geas and channel the trolls into something more positive.

They think that what happened with the trolls is that there were a bunch of little misunderstandings or misrememberings on their part so that by the time they fully understood what was happening it was too late. When the one player said "lizard men" most of the other players honestly thought he was talking about some other dungeon that they had simply forgotten about.

They feel bad about killing children, although there was some debate about what constituted a child (probably a separate thread in that).

Glad to hear about that


The sorcrerer player has dropped rebuilding her as super min-maxxed (for now), however he no longer wants to be a support character and is going to be a full blaster from now on, and says that the party is entitled to an NPC buff bot as it is an essential role for party balance but nobody wants to actually play one. Which is a more crunchy topic and I think worthy of a separate thread.

What made the sorcerer desist on his min maxxed character? If you don't adress the problem, it will eventually come back. You earlier mentioned that his character has feats not related to magic casting that he would like to change to ones that are absolutely about spell casting. Which I find perfectly reasonable.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 03:55 PM
You earlier mentioned that his character has feats not related to magic casting that he would like to change to ones that are absolutely about spell casting. Which I find perfectly reasonable.

It might be if the rest of the group were similarly min-maxxed.

Everyone else has a well rounded character, honestly a little too well rounded.

Having one guy who is going balls to the wall in one direction tends to create an unbalanced party, and in this case it is even worse because the rest of the group is going to have to pick up slack in areas where he can no longer shine. For example, he had most of the parties knowledge skills, and if he drops them that means someone else is going to have to pick up his slack in that area or the entire group will suffer.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 03:58 PM
It might be if the rest of the group were similarly min-maxxed.

Everyone else has a well rounded character, honestly a little too well rounded.

Having one guy who is going balls to the wall in one direction tends to create an unbalanced party, and in this case it is even worse because the rest of the group is going to have to pick up slack in areas where he can no longer shine. For example, he had most of the parties knowledge skills, and if he drops them that means someone else is going to have to pick up his slack in that area or the entire group will suffer.

You didn't answer the quote. I asked specifically about the feats

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 04:10 PM
You didn't answer the quote. I asked specifically about the feats

I don't see the difference. The principal is more or less the same.

Basically, he is trying to rework his character so that he doesn't have to worry about anything but being a pure optimized blaster who can trivially solve any problem that can be solved with direct damage magic and contribute nothing if it can't.

Currently he has stopped arguing about changing his stats (although I do agree it will probably just be a matter of time) and is trying to convince me to let him have an NPC bard buff-bot join the party so that he can drop all of his spells that don't contribute to direct damage.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 04:24 PM
I don't see the difference. The principal is more or less the same.

Basically, he is trying to rework his character so that he doesn't have to worry about anything but being a pure optimized blaster who can trivially solve any problem that can be solved with direct damage magic and contribute nothing if it can't.

Currently he has stopped arguing about changing his stats (although I do agree it will probably just be a matter of time) and is trying to convince me to let him have an NPC bard buff-bot join the party so that he can drop all of his spells that don't contribute to direct damage.

I believe you are being too strict when it comes to feats. If your system is anything like 5e or 3.5 this shouldn't be such a big deal as you are making it out to be. You even said that the other members of the party are a little too well rounded, so a little unbalance (Such as a caster, focusing his feats on casting) would be absolutely ok.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 04:37 PM
I believe you are being too strict when it comes to feats. If your system is anything like 5e or 3.5 this shouldn't be such a big deal as you are making it out to be. You even said that the other members of the party are a little too well rounded, so a little unbalance (Such as a caster, focusing his feats on casting) would be absolutely ok.

Not sure I am being too strict about anything as he hasn't actually made any serious requests. I told him it would be ok for him to change his character, to which he proposed a min-maxxed monstrosity where everything that aided his ability to cast blasting spells was maxxed out and every other aspect of the character was stripped away and I told him to please be a little bit more realistic, at which point he just bitched.


In my experience RPGs are pretty crappy with hyper focused characters, and the rest of the group being unfocused will make the problem worse. The rest of the party will have to become even less focused to pick up his slack and will thus feel even more useless in combat. And, if they come up against something which is immune or resistant to his spells (or something that just takes him out on the first round as he is getting rid of most of his defenses) the rest of the party will be ill equipped to deal with it.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 04:48 PM
Not sure I am being too strict about anything as he hasn't actually made any serious requests. I told him it would be ok for him to change his character, to which he proposed a min-maxxed monstrosity where everything that aided his ability to cast blasting spells was maxxed out and every other aspect of the character was stripped away and I told him to please be a little bit more realistic, at which point he just bitched.


He also wants to trade out any skills and feats that aren't directly relating to spellcasting.


Every character making takes a little back and fort, There is nothing out of the ordinary here. Btw am not saying you should allows him to have cha 20 and dex 3 if that is his wish. BUT picking whatever feats and skills your character should have is more than a perfectly reasonable request.




In my experience RPGs are pretty crappy with hyper focused characters, and the rest of the group being unfocused will make the problem worse. The rest of the party will have to become even less focused to pick up his slack and will thus feel even more useless in combat. And, if they come up against something which is immune or resistant to his spells (or something that just takes him out on the first round as he is getting rid of most of his defenses) the rest of the party will be ill equipped to deal with it.

Absolutely not my experience. In my experience players adapt very easily to these sort of "problems". And again, Am not talking about big changes, Just allow the guy to pick his feats a skills withing the rules of the game. To me, that doesn't seem such an awful thing.

noob
2019-01-01, 04:52 PM
Not sure I am being too strict about anything as he hasn't actually made any serious requests. I told him it would be ok for him to change his character, to which he proposed a min-maxxed monstrosity where everything that aided his ability to cast blasting spells was maxxed out and every other aspect of the character was stripped away and I told him to please be a little bit more realistic, at which point he just bitched.


In my experience RPGs are pretty crappy with hyper focused characters, and the rest of the group being unfocused will make the problem worse. The rest of the party will have to become even less focused to pick up his slack and will thus feel even more useless in combat. And, if they come up against something which is immune or resistant to his spells (or something that just takes him out on the first round as he is getting rid of most of his defenses) the rest of the party will be ill equipped to deal with it.

The thing is that sorcerers while being able to do stuff other than blasting feels inadequate when you try to push then into noncombat roles when compared to wizards or clerics(so much less polyvalence unless you reach very high optimisation such as spellbook sorcerer or sorcerers with at will psychic reformation or yet other broken stuff like that) but when you do not compare them to other casters they are already setting breaking if going toward polyvalence.
So by deciding to play a sorcerer he was already deciding to restrain itself and become less good at everything but battle (where a sorcerer is on par with a wizard at low level of optimisation and at mid levels wizard is better and at stupidly high levels of optimization both classes gets all the spells at will).

If you get to try to convince the sorcerer to be polyvalent it will make it even more annoying and op: that player is min minimizing and not min maxing as you think he is: right now he probably is intentionally making a weak character to not break the whole setting with shenanigans.
If you tell that player to be more polyvalent it might switch to wizard or cleric or use any of the methods for getting tons of spell access at once as a sorcerer then be setting breaking as hell.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 04:57 PM
btw, Realistic? really? is that the word you went with? Cause reality has all kinds of people, so it would absolutely be realistic for him to be dex1, str1, cha20 if he wanted.

Florian
2019-01-01, 05:12 PM
@zinycor:

It was already mentioned that all character were build and outfitted along the same parameters. It doesn't really matter what the sorcerer player wants. When that was the basic deal for the whole group, it´s either playing along or quit the game. The thing with wanting a free bard, nearly demanding it, practically shows were all of this is leading to.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 05:24 PM
btw, Realistic? really? is that the word you went with? Cause reality has all kinds of people, so it would absolutely be realistic for him to be dex1, str1, cha20 if he wanted.

I meant realistic as in "a realistic offer", I could have said "reasonable" or just "get real" instead.

I am fully willing to negotiate, he just started out asking for the moon.

Also, I don't think it is "realistic" to have someone with all 18s and 3s. Even someone like Stephan Hawking wouldn't be that extreme.



Every character making takes a little back and fort, There is nothing out of the ordinary here. Btw am not saying you should allows him to have cha 20 and dex 3 if that is his wish. BUT picking whatever feats and skills your character should have is more than a perfectly reasonable request.

Absolutely not my experience. In my experience players adapt very easily to these sort of "problems". And again, Am not talking about big changes, Just allow the guy to pick his feats a skills withing the rules of the game. To me, that doesn't seem such an awful thing.

He already did pick his feats and skills within the rules of the game, now he wants to change them, which is not within the rules of the game, and which I already said he could if he was going to be reasonable about it.

And honestly, I wouldn't have a problem with any of it, except that he is now leaving the rest of the party in the lurch. They created their characters as a group with every person dividing up their responsibilities and roles to cover all of their bases and work as a unit that is stronger than the sum of its parts. By deciding that he is going to hyper-specialize everyone else will either have to further spread out their characters to cover their bases or be completely unable to deal with certain situations.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 05:33 PM
I meant realistic as in "a realistic offer", I could have said "reasonable" or just "get real" instead.

I am fully willing to negotiate, he just started out asking for the moon.

Also, I don't think it is "realistic" to have someone with all 18s and 3s. Even someone like Stephan Hawking wouldn't be that extreme.


Abosultely fits stephen hawking, you kidding me?




He already did pick his feats and skills within the rules of the game, now he wants to change them, which is not within the rules of the game, and which I already said he could if he was going to be reasonable about it.

And honestly, I wouldn't have a problem with any of it, except that he is now leaving the rest of the party in the lurch. They created their characters as a group with every person dividing up their responsibilities and roles to cover all of their bases and work as a unit that is stronger than the sum of its parts. By deciding that he is going to hyper-specialize everyone else will either have to further spread out their characters to cover their bases or be completely unable to deal with certain situations.

What is this "reasonable about it" you are talking about?
And if this such a bad deal for the group, kick him out. But I really don't see why it should be, Every party has weaknesess, that isn't so bad. If the players are willing to deal with that, then that's not a problem. If the players are not okay with that, kick this guy out.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 05:36 PM
@zinycor:

It was already mentioned that all character were build and outfitted along the same parameters. It doesn't really matter what the sorcerer player wants.
What? how could it not matter wat one of your players wants? What sort of game are you playing?


When that was the basic deal for the whole group, it´s either playing along or quit the game. The thing with wanting a free bard, nearly demanding it, practically shows were all of this is leading to.

That's pretty much a decision that is meant to be taken by the table, I don't advice on that line because I don't have any advice to offer, since thats an outside of game problem.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 05:39 PM
If going by the rules is the matter, allow him to kill or retire his character and create a new one with whatever rules your game allows.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 05:41 PM
If going by the rules is the matter, allow him to kill or retire his character and create a new one with whatever rules your game allows.

It isn't.

You said "Just allow the guy to pick his feats a skills within the rules of the game," and I was responding by saying he already did pick his skills and feats within the rules of the game but I don't have a problem with him going outside of the rules of the game to change them if it will make him happier, I would just prefer if he didn't in a more low-key way that doesn't screw over the rest of the table.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 05:43 PM
It isn't.

You said "Just allow the guy to pick his feats a skills within the rules of the game," and I was responding by saying he already did pick his skills and feats within the rules of the game but I don't have a problem with him going outside of the rules of the game to change them if it will make him happier, I would just prefer if he didn't in a more low-key way that doesn't screw over the rest of the table.

Your preferences hardly matter, and I don't think it would screw over anything.

Florian
2019-01-01, 06:11 PM
What? how could it not matter wat one of your players wants? What sort of game are you playing?.

The kind that are a group-based social activity. Depending on the exact rules used, even heavily on the team-based side. That's why every decision has to be weighted with how they effect all participants, not only a single player.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 06:12 PM
Your preferences hardly matter, and I don't think it would screw over anything.

The DM's preferences hardly matter?

Having someone who refuses to work as a team player and is on a completely different optimization level as the rest of the party won't screw over anything?

Are you seriously saying this?


Honestly the longer I stick around this thread the more it seems like you are just trying to get a rise out of me.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 06:13 PM
The kind that are a group-based social activity. Depending on the exact rules used, even heavily on the team-based side. That's why every decision has to be weighted with how they effect all participants, not only a single player.

Thats weird

zinycor
2019-01-01, 06:18 PM
The DM's preferences hardly matter?

Why would it? The GM has a role to accomplish, and so do the players. If you don't like the character... other than pointing it out to the player and hope for him to understand there is no more than the GM Should do. If the player is a problem or the table is not the responsability of the GM, but the table as a whole.


Having someone who refuses to work as a team player and is on a completely different optimization level as the rest of the party won't screw over anything?

I don't think so. In my experience new players learn from more experienced players.


Are you seriously saying this?


Honestly the longer I stick around this thread the more it seems like you are just trying to get a rise out of me.
¿? Really don't get where that comes from... Just trying to help here man. If it bothers you so much I can stop posting.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 06:33 PM
I don't think so. In my experience new players learn from more experienced players.

What exactly is the lesson they are learning here though? Serious question.


¿? Really don't get where that comes from... Just trying to help here man. If it bothers you so much I can stop posting.

I won't lie, your "Jesus man WTF is wrong with you for calling someone a psychopath because they don't play they way you want them to," comment last week bothered me a bit, but at this point it isn't that you are bothering me so much as you keep stating opinions that I find harder and harder to take seriously.

The game is a social activity that relies on everyone having fun, of course everyone's opinions matter.

I do appreciate your presence here, for the prompt thread bumps if nothing else :smallbiggrin:

zinycor
2019-01-01, 06:44 PM
What exactly is the lesson they are learning here though? Serious question.
To build their characters better




I won't lie, your "Jesus man WTF is wrong with you for calling someone a psychopath because they don't play they way you want them to," comment last week bothered me a bit,



I wouldn't have done that comment if you didn't say:


The players do not enjoy imagining their characters betraying allies and murdering innocent women and children because they are not sadists and psychopaths.

Which clearly implies that if a person does enjoy imagining their characters doing such things, they are a sadist and psycopath. However This has already been cleared as you clearified you posted it in a flippant manner, so we ok.


but at this point it isn't that you are bothering me so much as you keep stating opinions that I find harder and harder to take seriously.

The game is a social activity that relies on everyone having fun, of course everyone's opinions matter.

I do appreciate your presence here, for the prompt thread bumps if nothing else :smallbiggrin:

Is it so hard to understand? In my opinion a player picking caster feats and skills, won't break your game. I believe that makes it clear, doesn't it?

Cluedrew
2019-01-01, 06:52 PM
Also, I don't think it is "realistic" to have someone with all 18s and 3s. Even someone like Stephan Hawking wouldn't be that extreme.Yeah, Stephan Hawking gets close but I don't think even he would reach that point. He probably would* have 18 INT. Since 3 STR is enough to move around he might have a strength of 1 and his dexterity might be similar. But that is where it stops. The endurance aspect of CON is irrelevant and I am unaware of any problems with his skeleton so that would be average or a bit low. Wisdom probably a bit higher than average, but not spectacular. CHA is about average as well, he had good public speaking skills (and a very good poker face) but other than that, neutral.

So even Stephan Hawking might only have 3 extreme stats.

* If he was a D&D character.



The kind that are a group-based social activity. Depending on the exact rules used, even heavily on the team-based side. That's why every decision has to be weighted with how they effect all participants, not only a single player.Thats weirdHow so? It makes sense to me at first glance.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 06:53 PM
To build their characters better.

What is "better" in this context?

He is switching to a less competent character that is making the group weaker as a whole.

Are they learning to be more like him or less like him in this case?

zinycor
2019-01-01, 06:54 PM
What is "better" in this context?

He is switching to a less competent character that is making the group weaker as a whole.

Are they learning to be more like him or less like him in this case?

How? Are skills and feats that important in your game?

zinycor
2019-01-01, 06:57 PM
How so? It makes sense to me at first glance.

Am of the mind that your character is your responsability, unless you happen to offend any other person at the table. At that point it becomes an outside of game problem and solves itself by a mature conversation between players.

The Glyphstone
2019-01-01, 06:58 PM
Yeah, Stephan Hawking gets close but I don't think even he would reach that point. He probably would* have 18 INT. Since 3 STR is enough to move around he might have a strength of 1 and his dexterity might be similar. But that is where it stops. The endurance aspect of CON is irrelevant and I am unaware of any problems with his skeleton so that would be average or a bit low. Wisdom probably a bit higher than average, but not spectacular. CHA is about average as well, he had good public speaking skills (and a very good poker face) but other than that, neutral.

So even Stephan Hawking might only have 3 extreme stats.

* If he was a D&D character.

How so? It makes sense to me at first glance.

Stephen Hawking is probably a bad example anyways because he's the last sort of person you would invite on an archaeological expedition. Keep him on speed-dial to answer questions, but hauling him around through dangerous terrain is unlikely. On the other hand, Stephen Hawking's brain does not let him fly or shoot lightning bolts from his eyes.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 07:01 PM
How? Are skills and feats that important in your game?

Yes, skills are extremely important in my game.

Basically he is making a character who is only good in combat, and even then only offensively against things which are vulnerable to blasting spells as he is removing his defenses as well as his speed, maneuverability, and a good deal of his ability to act tactically.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 07:03 PM
Yes, skills are extremely important in my game.

Basically he is making a character who is only good in combat, and even then only offensively against things which are vulnerable to blasting spells as he is removing his defenses as well as his speed, maneuverability, and a good deal of his ability to act tactically.

My bad then. Thought your game was closer to 5e or 3.5. Always a problem with homebrew games.

Cluedrew
2019-01-01, 07:06 PM
Am of the mind that your character is your responsability, unless you happen to offend any other person at the table.Yes, it is your responsibility. But if you have offended someone (or otherwise damage the game*) with your character I would say you have already have failed that responsibility. So why not start thinking about it earlier?

* There are a lot of ways you can damage the game besides offending people. For instance a friend had a game where one character "accidentally" ended up so over powered it could solo any (combat) encounter other characters could meaningfully contribute to. No one was actually offended by this, but it did make the game less fun.


At that point it becomes an outside of game problem and solves itself by a mature conversation between players.You are optimistic in phrasing it like it happens every time, but I agree that is what should happen.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 07:06 PM
My bad then Thought your game was closer to 5e or 3.5. Always a problem with homebrew games.


Honestly that depends on the game style more than the system.

Running a dungeon can be very skill intensive depending on how much emphasis the DM puts on traditional "rogue" stuff like finding secrets, disarming traps, picking locks, etc. Also overcoming obstacles which require running, jumping, climbing, swimming, etc.

Wilderness survival, social interaction scenes, and investigations are all fairly commonplace across systems I play and all require a lot of skills and very little fire ball.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 07:15 PM
Yes, it is your responsibility. But if you have offended someone (or otherwise damage the game*) with your character I would say you have already have failed that responsibility. So why not start thinking about it earlier?

don't really get your point here


* There are a lot of ways you can damage the game besides offending people. For instance a friend had a game where one character "accidentally" ended up so over powered it could solo any (combat) encounter other characters could meaningfully contribute to. No one was actually offended by this, but it did make the game less fun.

Not really my experience, if a character becomes that powerful, is not the fault of the player but the system which allowed for that.


You are optimistic in phrasing it like it happens every time, but I agree that is what should happen.
Of course it happens every time. I believe most tables has some kind of problem at one point of another (After all roleplaying games have a lot of rules, and many of those rules have many posssible interpretations. That's without even mentioning acting outside of the boundaries of a game, or outside of game problems.).

zinycor
2019-01-01, 07:18 PM
Honestly that depends on the game style more than the system.

Running a dungeon can be very skill intensive depending on how much emphasis the DM puts on traditional "rogue" stuff like finding secrets, disarming traps, picking locks, etc. Also overcoming obstacles which require running, jumping, climbing, swimming, etc.

Wilderness survival, social interaction scenes, and investigations are all fairly commonplace across systems I play and all require a lot of skills and very little fire ball.

Absolutely depends on the system


he is removing his defenses as well as his speed, maneuverability, and a good deal of his ability to act tactically.

For example, of the things you mentioned, only maneuverability (Athletics, Acrobatics) is related to any skill on the editions I mentioned.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 07:24 PM
And the whole searching for traps, on some editions sorcerers aren't even able to do that.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 07:34 PM
For example, of the things you mentioned, only maneuverability (Athletics, Acrobatics) is related to any skill on the editions I mentioned.

As I said, he is stripping away everything that doesn't directly aid in his ability to cast damaging spells.

Ability scores, skills, feats, equipment, and spell selection.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 07:36 PM
As I said, he is stripping away everything that doesn't directly aid in his ability to cast damaging spells.

Ability scores, skills, feats, equipment, and spell selection.

Then your answer is clear, just say no to him, he can't do that. Is not in the rules.

All this time I thought He wanted to change his skills for others, and his feats for others feats.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 07:40 PM
Then your answer is clear, just say no to him, he can't do that. Is not in the rules.

All this time I thought He wanted to change his skills for others, and his feats for others feats.

He does. He just wants to get swap out absolutely everything that doesn't directly help him with blasting spells for something that does. For skills this means maxing out his concentration and spell craft and dropping everything else, as well as dropping his intelligence to the point where he has almost no skill points to begin with.


Absolutely depends on the system.

I honestly can't think of a system where those things I mentioned wouldn't be skill checks.

I am sure they exist, but I have played AD&D, 3.X, 4E, 5E, Pathfinder, Star Wars, GURPS, Shadow Run, Exalted, oWoD, nWoD, Riddle of Steel, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Call of Cthulhu, Dark Heresy, and I am sure a few more I can't recall as well as having read dozens of others and as far as I can remember all of them involved fairly heavy skill usage for wilderness survival, social encounters, and investigations.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 07:47 PM
He does. He just wants to get swap out absolutely everything that doesn't directly help him with blasting spells for something that does. For skills this means maxing out his concentration and spell craft and dropping everything else, as well as dropping his intelligence to the point where he has almost no skill points to begin with.

As I have said multiple times now, I don't think you should allow him to drop his numbers on intelligence that much, if at all. But if he want to change his skills towards those things... frankly, I don't see any problem as long as it is legal.




I honestly can't think of a system where those things I mentioned wouldn't be skill checks.

I am sure they exist, but I have played AD&D, 3.X, 4E, 5E, Pathfinder, Star Wars, GURPS, Shadow Run, Exalted, oWoD, nWoD, Riddle of Steel, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Call of Cthulhu, Dark Heresy, and I am sure a few more I can't recall as well as having read dozens of others and as far as I can remember all of them involved fairly heavy skill usage for wilderness survival, social encounters, and investigations.

You mentioned:
Defense: Not affected by skills
Speed: Not affected by skills
good deal of his ability to act tactically: Not really sure what you mean by this.
Maneuverability: Affected by some skills.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 08:01 PM
You mentioned:
Defense: Not affected by skills
Speed: Not affected by skills
good deal of his ability to act tactically: Not really sure what you mean by this.
Maneuverability: Affected by some skills.

I am not just talking about skills here. I was responding to the part about how it teaches the other players to make a "better" character and what lesson they will actually take away from someone who plays a one trick pony who overshadows them in combats (that he survives) and is dead weight the rest of time.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 08:06 PM
I am not just talking about skills here. I was responding to the part about how it teaches the other players to make a "better" character and what lesson they will actually take away from someone who plays a one trick pony who overshadows them in combats (that he survives) and is dead weight the rest of time.

I am just talking of skills here! Well, skills and feats xD

This might be the reason of why I can't really get your points xD

So, just to be clear.

I believe that the player should be able to change his skills and feats, in whatever way suits him, as long it is within the rules!

That is, with the exception of any rules that forbid him to do so. But hey, that sort of rules are meant to be broken.

Cluedrew
2019-01-01, 08:06 PM
Stephen Hawking is probably a bad example anyways because he's the last sort of person you would invite on an archaeological expedition. Keep him on speed-dial to answer questions, but hauling him around through dangerous terrain is unlikely. On the other hand, Stephen Hawking's brain does not let him fly or shoot lightning bolts from his eyes.I some how missed this ENTIRE POST last time, they have been coming in pretty fast. Yes he is not a typical adventurer. On the other hand I would totally play that wizard. Have a system design in my notes about it actually.


don't really get your point hereMy point is...

OK, let me back up. What did you mean by this sentence: "Am of the mind that your character is your responsability, unless you happen to offend any other person at the table." Particularly, in the context of this statement being weird: "The kind that are a group-based social activity. Depending on the exact rules used, even heavily on the team-based side. That's why every decision has to be weighted with how they effect all participants, not only a single player." I tried to figure it out but I must of missed the point.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 08:10 PM
Am of the mind that your character is your responsability, unless you happen to offend any other person at the table.[/I]" Particularly, in the context of this statement being weird: "The kind that are a group-based social activity. Depending on the exact rules used, even heavily on the team-based side. That's why every decision has to be weighted with how they effect all participants, not only a single player." I tried to figure it out but I must of missed the point.

That I don't think you should build a character thinking of whatever the party needs, you should play a character that you think is fun/interesting.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 09:16 PM
I am just talking of skills here! Well, skills and feats xD

This might be the reason of why I can't really get your points xD

So, just to be clear.

I believe that the player should be able to change his skills and feats, in whatever way suits him, as long it is within the rules!

That is, with the exception of any rules that forbid him to do so. But hey, that sort of rules are meant to be broken.


So you are against letting him drop his int to the point where most of his skill points disappear into the ether? Because that is most of the problem.


The other issue is that the group was created with the understanding that he would handle most of the lore and social skills, he actually insisted that he wanted to play a super-smart book worm type character and that other people NOT take knowledge skills . (although I think he was under the impression that sorcerers used Intelligence as their primary casting stat when he said it). If he suddenly drops away he is leaving a huge hole in the party whenever situations or those that need knowledge come up.

Again, I am not sure if you mean they will learn to make "better" characters because you think his character is better and they will imitate him, his character is worse and they will know what not to do, or if they are going to be forced to learn to make characters who are better because they can compensate for a team member's deficiencies and still survive.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 09:17 PM
That I don't think you should build a character thinking of whatever the party needs, you should play a character that you think is fun/interesting.

That kind of reminds me of my last DM.

He insisted we all make our characters in a vacuum, and then got really surprised / mad at us when the campaign would crash and burn after a couple of sessions because we had absolutely no synergy from either a mechanical level or on the level of character ethos, personality, and motivations.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 09:32 PM
So you are against letting him drop his int to the point where most of his skill points disappear into the ether? Because that is most of the problem.

Of course, I have already said so


The other issue is that the group was created with the understanding that he would handle most of the lore and social skills, he actually insisted that he wanted to play a super-smart book worm type character and that other people NOT take knowledge skills . (although I think he was under the impression that sorcerers used Intelligence as their primary casting stat when he said it). If he suddenly drops away he is leaving a huge hole in the party whenever situations or those that need knowledge come up.

Then this should be brought to the atention of the table, so they can bring up any concerns and work something out.


Again, I am not sure if you mean they will learn to make "better" characters because you think his character is better and they will imitate him, his character is worse and they will know what not to do, or if they are going to be forced to learn to make characters who are better because they can compensate for a team member's deficiencies and still survive.

Because focused chracters are better on games with classes, I believe that having characters more focused on doing their part that being able to do a little bit of everything.



That kind of reminds me of my last DM.

He insisted we all make our characters in a vacuum, and then got really surprised / mad at us when the campaign would crash and burn after a couple of sessions because we had absolutely no synergy from either a mechanical level or on the level of character ethos, personality, and motivations.

Excuse me? You trying to insult me? Cause I don't know why you trying to do so. Just to make it clear, I am not your previous DM.

I don't make my players create characters away from each other, and make sure they understand their decisions.

I would thank not try to draw any false equivalencies between me and DMs that you have played with, specially not ones that would make me seem like a bad GM.

Talakeal
2019-01-01, 09:49 PM
Because focused chracters are better on games with classes, I believe that having characters more focused on doing their part that being able to do a little bit of everything.

IMO it is, like most things in life, a spectrum. Characters who are hyper-focused in one area to the expense of everything else tend to be pretty terrible, and likewise characters who are so generalized that they don't excel in anything tend to be pretty terrible as well.



Excuse me? You trying to insult me? Cause I don't know why you trying to do so. Just to make it clear, I am not your previous DM.

I don't make my players create characters away from each other, and make sure they understand their decisions.

I would thank not try to draw any false equivalencies between me and DMs that you have played with, specially not ones that would make me seem like a bad GM.

I am saying that I disagree with your viewpoint and am using the example of a DM who had a very similar (but not necessarily identical) viewpoint to illustrate why.

zinycor
2019-01-01, 09:50 PM
I am saying that I disagree with your viewpoint and am using the example of a DM who had a very similar (but not necessarily identical) viewpoint to illustrate why.

Nonetheless, I would appreciate you didn't do that anymore.

Malifice
2019-01-02, 01:28 AM
After the session Play B came to me and stated that he was very upset about the game.

He has quite a few very valid points.

Your mistakes (in order):

1) You created his character. You're not a player, or one of the protagonists. The players are. They should have absolute freedom to create their own protagonist for the story (subject to DM veto for protagonists that dont work with the story such as an 'anti-paladin' in a group of Good aligned PCs, or are mechanically broken).

2) You've required him to be a mind reader. 1 in 20 combat encounters you place down in front of the Players (determined randomly) are party killers (while the other 19/20 combat encounters are designed to be fought). Accordingly when you throw down monsters, the Players expect the encounter to be a combat encounter and act accordingly. Unless you clearly and unambiguously telegraph the fact to your players that the monster in front of them is not supposed to be a combat encounter, this is a really bad thing to do.

You mitigate this somewhat by removing 'perma-death' as a consequence, but you still throw encounters at the party, that are 'deadly' and are thus a good chance of inflicting those negative consequences, and the only way they can avoid those negative consequences is to either:

a) Read your mind, or

b) Get lucky, or

c) 'Fantasy Underground Vietnam' and always flee from every combat encounter.

Combat encounters are designed to be fought. It's a central pillar in most RPG's (they all have a rather weighty chapter devoted to it). When you roll on a table and throw monsters down, the players expect combat. If the encounter is not there to be fought (a Pit Fiend meeting 1st level PCs) you need to clearly and unambiguously telegraph this to the players (and I mean actually tell them: 'If you try and fight this thing, you'll almost certainly all die').

3) You failed to enforce good karma for good actions. If every time the PCs let a NPC live, instead of murdering him on the spot (after torturing him for information), and then that NPC comes back in a 'gotcha' moment, your players will start murdering and torturing every NPC prisoner, instead of treating them kindly. If the PC Fighter only gets 'ambushed by theives' in town when he takes off his armor to relax, he'll never take it off again. A PC with a detailed family backstory (and who ineracts with them in game) should have that family pop in from time to time to provide minor assistane, and not just 'get kidnapped as some lame story hook' stuff.

When a PC does a good action, or treats someone well, or roleplays a character appropriately, he should be rewarded by the story.

The prisoner that they released recognizes them when the PCs themselves are captured later on, and helps them to escape. The PCs love interest provides them a place to hide out when they do escape to recover.

If your player is contributing to the story, and to the success of the campaign arc, he should be rewarded by the story. Good deeds should be encouraged, and bad deeds punished.

___________________________

In short, admit you were wrong (but that you certainly didnt single him out). Let him (and any one else who wants to) create a totally new Character of his own choice with the same XP.

That also fixes the other problems (temporarily). Just keep an eye on them going forwards. Telegraph 'non combat' combat encounters appropriately, and reward good actions (through the Story) and punish bad ones.

Talakeal
2019-01-02, 09:13 AM
@Malifice:

Thank you for being tou but fair. A few clarifications:

1: I only handled the numerical aspects of character creation. The players still made all of the choices.

The player in question was mad that the range of starting PC stats went from 8-16 (just like in standard 5e point buy) rather than 3-18.

2: Its actually closer to 1/80 than 1/20, far less than the D&D DMG suggests. But they arent "encounters that are not supposed to be fought" they are deadly encounters that are the equivalent of a boss fight. If the players are already low on resources they probably should run, but they are certainly winnable.

Also, I am not sure if mind reading really comes into it, the random encounter roll is done in the open so the PCs know they are in for a rough time, and there are numerous skills and abilities that can be used to gauge the power of a foe in character.

3: Thats good advice, but I am legitimately not sure what you are refering to. What in the game is this in response to?

Cluedrew
2019-01-02, 09:28 AM
3: Thats good advice, but I am legitimately not sure what you are refering to. What in the game is this in response to?Probably the bit with the gifted armour being lost. Which wasn't a decision on your part (random tables right) but how it comes across the player is probably similar.

Also although I don't think you have handled things perfectly, I think you are doing a much better job than some other people think you are doing.

GloatingSwine
2019-01-02, 09:54 AM
2: Its actually closer to 1/80 than 1/20, far less than the D&D DMG suggests. But they arent "encounters that are not supposed to be fought" they are deadly encounters that are the equivalent of a boss fight. If the players are already low on resources they probably should run, but they are certainly winnable.


Doesn't that risk usurping the tension of actual boss fights, if these fifty/fifty encounters are just available to be encountered at random? (Especially if 5% of all encounters can produce them)

It's fine to let the fact that the encounters arrive at random/in response to unwise player behaviour drive the tension from encountering them and have them all be pitched at a "manageable" level.

Talakeal
2019-01-02, 09:57 AM
Probably the bit with the gifted armour being lost. Which wasn't a decision on your part (random tables right) but how it comes across the player is probably similar.

Also although I don't think you have handled things perfectly, I think you are doing a much better job than some other people think you are doing.

Thank you! I dont think I am doing perfect either, if I did this thread would be on the recruitment sub-forum asking how I can replace my terrible players instead.

Yes, that does make sense. I retconned the loss of the armor a month ago now, I had legitamtetely forgotten all about it. I cant believe this thread has been going for this long.

Yeah, I am a bit of an inflexible DM. I really really dont like fudging dice rolls, so I can see how one might prefer a less impartial GM who rewards morality.

Malifice
2019-01-02, 10:23 AM
1: I only handled the numerical aspects of character creation. The players still made all of the choices.

The player in question was mad that the range of starting PC stats went from 8-16 (just like in standard 5e point buy) rather than 3-18.

As DM mate, you should sit down with your players during character creation, to guide them and help them create the character they want.

If my player (5E Dnd) expresses a desire to create a 'Sneaky Ninja' I'll point him to Shadow Monk, Gloomstalker Ranger, and Assassin Rogue as suggestions, explain multiclassing with him, and suggest good break points for multiclassing, or other rules to him to help him in the process.

It's his character though. Im there to help with the rules, ensure he doesnt make any rules mistakes, and provide clarification to any rules questions he may have (and also to gently veto any character decisions he makes that run counter to the collective story we're trying to tell, or might prove to be disruptive to the gaming group and story as a whole, such as creating an evil Necromancer in a party featuring goodly Paladins sworn to destroy undead).

I'd offer to let him create his character as he see's fit. It's his character and he should get the right to choose what to play and how to play it.


2: Its actually closer to 1/80 than 1/20, far less than the D&D DMG suggests. But they arent "encounters that are not supposed to be fought" they are deadly encounters that are the equivalent of a boss fight. If the players are already low on resources they probably should run, but they are certainly winnable.

Also, I am not sure if mind reading really comes into it, the random encounter roll is done in the open so the PCs know they are in for a rough time, and there are numerous skills and abilities that can be used to gauge the power of a foe in character.

Firstly, no random encounter is ever 'random'. You as DM decide to roll and when to roll, and after the roll you also decide if it happens or not. Heck, you probably wrote the chart the monster is on in the first place!

You're not a slave to the dice and charts. DMing is an Art far more than a exercise in maths.

Why hinge the story (and possible campaign ending TPK's, or serious negative consequences) on random encounters? The encounters should add to the story, or spice up a boring session, or allow you to show something to the players (foreshadowing something and similar). Not just be a monster on a table.

I use 'random' encounters, but they're only inserted when the action bogs down or for other reasons (to move the story along, foreshadow something, get the players thinking, a false flag, make the world seem more alive or unpredictable, or as 'fake' random encounters - i.e. I pre-planned them during the week.

I really dont see the point in sitting back and letting dice rolls dictate when the party should run and when they shouldn't, they're much better served by being placed by the DM on purpose, taking into account the tempo of the game and other factors.

You stated in another thread you're a fan of Warhammer Quest and it's 'draw a card' random monster placement and DM free environment. It's a fun game, until you draw the 1d6-1 minotaurs, roll a 6 and cop a overwhelming TPK. Without a DM to guide the action, those TPKs are all too common (and pointless).

As DM you're the guide and director of the action. While bad days happen (and bad rolls can spoil the day of any party) Im always reluctant to let a random encounter overwhelm a party. It's pointless, frustrating as a player and and annoying when it happens a lot.

Even if I use a 'random' encounter table in a published adventure, I use the dice roll only as a guide, and look rows above (and below) the roll result to see if I cant find an encounter that is more balanced, and fun. I'll disregard a clearly superior threat as a combat encounter, and will only isert such an encounter as window dressing (or a social encounter).

Examples include a Wyvern or Frost Giant for 1st level PCs. I'll have the Frost Giant be drunk and looking for something (and a Social encounter, that even if attacked does only non lethal damage, seeing the PCs as sport and beneath its concern) and have the Wyvern only be spotted flying high above (to scare the PCs).

Remember, it takes on average 13 encounters or so to advance a level for most of 5E's levels. Even just a 5 percent chance of a TPK per encounter means odds are the party is almost certainly TPK'ed before they hit 5th level. The encounter system is designed so the PCs are expected to win, but at a cost (in resources). This resource cost is compounded by multiple encounters in a single 'adventuring day'.

I'd hate to cop some kind of negative long term drawback to an encounter that was randomly placed in front of me by a DM who could have gone 'Nope' instead, and placed a fun, challenging or entertaining encounter that he's put some thought into in front of me instead.

You want your player to engage with the story? Have the story involve them, and work with them, and dont leave them at the mercy of a roll on a chart.


3: Thats good advice, but I am legitimately not sure what you are refering to. What in the game is this in response to?

Your PC did a good deed (he helped out another PC) buying him armor. I would have considered gently reminding the PC he helped of this fact (during the week in private) to see if he couldnt return the favor and get the PC in question healed.

The game is all about teamwork remember, and that should be gently encouraged by the DM wherever possible.

Presuming the gambler PC is evilly aligned (and thus wouldnt care about helping the PC) I'd instead consider having some of the Gambler PC's buddies come and reward the armor giving PC for buying the Gambler the armor and 'keeping their mark safe'. Their offer of healing comes with a condition of course; they want to see the Gambling PC at their next high stakes Gambling match... an underground Monster Pit fighting competition, with a high buy in...

Bam presto. You've 1) rewarded the PC for being kind in game (reinforcing good behavior), 2) used the Gambling PC's gambling trait as a Hook (tying him into the world) and 3) Inserted a story hook too good to refuse. Youve used the act of kindness, the gamblers gambling problem it stemmed from as a story tool to drive the story forward,reward good player teamwork and non-murder-hobism and placed a cool hook in front of the party all in one hit.

Malifice
2019-01-02, 10:34 AM
Probably the bit with the gifted armour being lost. Which wasn't a decision on your part (random tables right) but how it comes across the player is probably similar.

Exactly. It's always the DMs decision.

You're not a slave to a roll on a table. A DM you have a higher obligation than that.

Talakeal
2019-01-02, 01:08 PM
@Malifice:

The players made all of the decisions regarding their characters.

All I did was calculate the numbers, fill out the actual character shets, and present the choices to them using narrative terms rather than mechanical ones.



As for the random encounter tables, I think you use them for a fundamentally different purpose than I do. For me they are a tool for preventing the 15 minute adventuring day more than anything.

Also, I dont know if this is better or worse in your eyes, but I designed all of the random encounter tables for each location and every encounter was tailor built and has a bit of story and lore behind it, the random factor is just exactly when, where, and in what order they show up.


I personally have had a lot of bad experiances with fudging dice on both sides of the screen and with GMs trying to adjust the difficulty of the game to match the party's capabilities. My veteran players have had similar experiances asked me not to fudge dice or to tailor encounters for them.

I know a lot of GMs swear by fudging dice and not being a slave to rolls or tables or preexisting setting decisions, but I have not had good luck with it in the past and I always err on letting the dice fall where they may.


Also, no, not Warhammer Quest. I played that game once, thought it was random nonsense, and never played it again. Depending on the thread in question I might have been praising Mordheim or Heroquest which are similar, but imo far superior, games set in the WHFB world.

GloatingSwine
2019-01-02, 01:50 PM
As for the random encounter tables, I think you use them for a fundamentally different purpose than I do. For me they are a tool for preventing the 15 minute adventuring day more than anything.


I'm not sure why you'd put boss level encounters in them for that. That seems to bias players towards doing the opposite (making sure they're at peak readiness for the next time a boss level encounter drops on their heads).

If you've noticed your players being excessively cautious about their resources (if you haven't, stop solving problems that aren't there), then you want encounters that will mildly drain them or prevent them being properly recovered (like their rest being interrupted by false alarms etc).

If they are over-resting they're probably doing it because of experience with too-swingy challenges and having more mild encounters will teach them that they can actually go on for a while before needing to stop, because they can judge how much of their resources they're going to need much better.

Malifice
2019-01-02, 01:54 PM
@Malifice:

The players made all of the decisions regarding their characters.

All I did was calculate the numbers, fill out the actual character shets, and present the choices to them using narrative terms rather than mechanical ones.

Let them do that. Id certainly rail against a DM presenting me narrative explanations of game mechanics. Some game mechanics I enjoy using based on the mechanics, and some things might sound appealing but I dont like the mechanics.

Your job as DM is to teach and guide and encourage the players. I think you'ver overstepped the mark here.

Just let him re-do his character. Hell be happy he can do it, it takes this argument away from him, and it makes you look like a good DM.

It's not a hill I would die on.


As for the random encounter tables, I think you use them for a fundamentally different purpose than I do. For me they are a tool for preventing the 15 minute adventuring day more than anything.

This didnt prevent the 15 minute adventuring day, it caused one. It brought the whole day (indeed the adventure) to a screeching halt.

To enforce the longer AD, simply impart temporal constraints on your quests, with penaltues for failure by that time and/or rewards for getting it done in time.

[Recover/ destroy/ locate/ slay/ escape/ defend/ defuse] the [macguffin/ ritual/ BBEG/ Princess/ ring of power/ dark lord/ bandit camp/ bomb] by [time X] or else [consequence] happens.

It mirrors not only reality (do you ever have all the time in the world to do the things you want to do?] and preserves verisimilitude but it also mirrors fiction (does Luke have all the time in the world to stop the Death Star or rescue Leia, or save Han Solo, or redeem his father and destroy the Emperor)? Every hero in every fiction story ever is working to a clock. Usually a clock that they only just manage to beat with seconds on it at the climax. Its so common to be a trope.

Back away from random encounters, and during the week sit down consider and place temporal constraints on your next adventure. They're more fun, more realistic, reinforce actions having consequences, and drive the story better than random charts ever will.


Also, I dont know if this is better or worse in your eyes, but I designed all of the random encounter tables for each location and every encounter was tailor built and has a bit of story and lore behind it, the random factor is just exactly when, where, and in what order they show up.


Its a wash. I only use random encounters as a last resort (and even then, they are not random, with me ignoring anything that could threaten to sidetrack the adventure or overwhelm the PCs). Most of my 'random' encounters only appear random. The reality is I statted up the encounter during the week, and simply made a dice roll, ignored the result, pretended to look something up, faked a sigh and shook my head, and looked up from behind the screen with a 'worried look' on my face - with the result pre-ordained.

Remember showmanship is part of the Art of DMing. The encounter is there because I planned it (as one of the encounters that Adventuring day, or because the players were dragging their heels). Not that the players realise that. It keeps them focused, advances the story and fulfils a mechanical task (in resource drainage).

Having time to think about it mid week ( I always devote one night a week to planning and encounter design, with game sessions on the weekend some time) also lets me add in environmental conditions, consider recurring NPCs, add social elements to the encounter, tie them into the story and make them much more entertaining than they would be otherwise.


I personally have had a lot of bad experiances with fudging dice on both sides of the screen and with GMs trying to adjust the difficulty of the game to match the party's capabilities. My veteran players have had similar experiances asked me not to fudge dice or to tailor encounters for them.


Screw them. Fudge rolls. They dont need to know. Lie to them about it if they ask. You have a higher responsibility as DM.

A fun game is better than letting the dice determine an outcome that sucks. The point of the game is to have fun remember?

That said, every now and then throw dice down in front of the DM screen in the open and let them fall where they may. I assure you, every single players eyes will follow that dice result until it stops on a number and they'll be more invested in your game than ever.

DMing is an art, not a science. A good DM knows how to guide and steer the game and make it better. Youre not just a random number generator. You're an artist, and a showman, a magician who does his best work behind the scenes and without the audience knowing it, while entertaining and engaging the audience who works with the players to create a fun and challenging session (and indeed campaign).


Also, no, not Warhammer Quest. I played that game once, thought it was random nonsense, and never played it again. Depending on the thread in question I might have been praising Mordheim or Heroquest which are similar, but imo far superior, games set in the WHFB world.

Well the principle is the same. A game where your outcome is based on the roll of dice on some random chart is much better when run in conjunction with a DM who ensures the results are flexible and fit the story, character and campaign.

If I lost a PC due to a random roll for no apparent reason, I wouldnt really be invested in that campaign again. If it kept happening, I'd likely not be interested in playing that game any more.

Im not advocating giving the players what they want. Quite the opposite really; Im advocating challenging and fun encounters that keep them engaged and wanting more. You currently have a player that feels disconnected from his character, from the story, from the party and from the rules you're using, to the point he's raised it with you directly. That's a massive red flag that something isnt working.

I dont think you're a 'bad DM' mate, you clearly put a lot of work into your games. I just think he might have a point, and you might benefit from a different approach.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-02, 02:04 PM
Screw them. Fudge rolls. They dont need to know. Lie to them about it if they ask. You have a higher responsibility as DM.

It should go without saying. But no, don't do this.

zinycor
2019-01-02, 02:14 PM
It should go without saying. But no, don't do this.

Fudging dice is its own debate really.

Malifice
2019-01-02, 02:27 PM
It should go without saying. But no, don't do this.

I completely disagree.

Im not a random number generating machine as a DM, and I am not beholden to letting a crap roll ruin a session (or indeed force the entire campaign into a grinding halt) due to no fault of the players, and simply due to gravity spinning a dice a certain way.

Your obligation as DM is higher than that. Youre there to ensure players are entertained, have fun, learn the game, are engaged and progressing the story in a collaborative way.

The dice are often a prop. Heck Ill often roll them for no reason at all, and pretend to look something up, faking a worried look, or shaking my head or whatever, or making a nonsensical note on a concealed pad of paper, for no other reason than to keep the players guessing.

Sometimes of course I'll toss those dice down in the open, and I assure you, you can hear a pin drop. You need to know when to mix it up.

A good DM is a good showman. Misdirection, characterization, player engagement, keeping them focused and so forth are your tools.

If your players ask, flatly deny it. Just like a magician should never reveal his secrets to the audience (or else he wrecks the show) so should a DM keep his cards to his chest.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-02, 02:32 PM
I completely disagree.

Im not a random number generating machine as a DM, and I am not beholden to letting a crap roll ruin a session (or indeed force the entire campaign into a grinding halt) due to no fault of the players, and simply due to gravity spinning a dice a certain way.

Your obligation as DM is higher than that. Youre there to ensure players are entertained, have fun, learn the game, are engaged and progressing the story in a collaborative way.

The dice are often a prop. Heck Ill often roll them for no reason at all, and pretend to look something up, faking a worried look, or shaking my head or whatever, or making a nonsensical note on a concealed pad of paper, for no other reason than to keep the players guessing.

Sometimes of course I'll toss those dice down in the open, and I assure you, you can hear a pin drop. You need to know when to mix it up.

A good DM is a good showman. Misdirection, characterization, player engagement, keeping them focused and so forth are your tools.

If your players ask, flatly deny it. Just like a magician should never reveal his secrets to the audience (or else he wrecks the show) so should a DM keep his cards to his chest.

"Cheat at the game and lie about it". That's the advice you're giving.

Malifice
2019-01-02, 02:44 PM
"Cheat at the game and lie about it". That's the advice you're giving.

DMs cant cheat.

The rules are that DMs can alter or void any rule at any time. Rule zero if you want to get technical.

And I dont know about you, but if your group of PCs reached the climax of a 3 year weekly campaign, and through no fault of their own got reduced to only the Paladin and the BBEG standing toe to toe, the other PCs lying bloodied and battered, with the doom clock approaching midnight, and the PC (on 1 HP) got the BBEG close to death (without killing him) and you knew the BBEG had a spell on him that would auto kill the Paladin and bring the campaign to a totally sucky ending would you:

1) Write down the damage the Paladin did, pretend to do some maths, mutter under your breath and mime looking defeated, before looking up and (in the BBEGs voice) suddenly scream NOOOOOOO; It cant BE! As you mime him collapsing to the ground to the cheers and entertainment of your players and high fives all round, or

2) Kill the Paladin with your spell and end the game on that note?

And which of those two endings would you prefer to see in a movie, or play yourself?

Not sure about you, but I play the game to have fun, and I DM to entertain my players, with challenges (which this clearly was) that place them in the role of the protagonists.

Its your game, and run your game however you want, but I know my own preferences.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-02, 02:53 PM
DMs cant cheat.

The rules are that DMs can alter or void any rule at any time. Rule zero if you want to get technical.

This is bad advice some badly written games have tainted the hobby with over the years, yes. And even then, it's been misinterpreted from what it was actually supposed to mean originally. Which is that the DM was empowered to make up rulings for situations not covered by the rules. It was never intended to be "Calvinball".


And I dont know about you, but if your group of PCs reached the climax of a 3 year weekly campaign, and through no fault of their own got reduced to only the Paladin and the BBEG standing toe to toe, the other PCs lying bloodied and battered, with the doom clock approaching midnight, and the PC (on 1 HP) got the BBEG close to death (without killing him) and you knew the BBEG had a spell on him that would auto kill the Paladin and bring the campaign to a totally sucky ending would you:

1) Write down the damage the Paladin did, pretend to do some maths, smile a bit, then shake your head looking upset, look up and (in the BBEGs voice) suddenly scream NOOOOOOO; It cant BE! As you mime him collapsing to the ground to the cheers and entertainment of your players and high fives all round, or

2) Kill the Paladin with your spell and end the game on that note?

I mean, doing 1 retroactively taints the entire campaign. So probably don't do that one.

Really, though, fudging isn't the biggest problem here. I mean, I think it ruins the entire game and I'd certainly immediately stop playing with any DM who did it. But the biggest problem is lying about it. If you know your players have a problem with fudging (as any good player does) and you do it anyway and pretend you didn't then you're actively a bad person, at least in this context.

Malifice
2019-01-02, 03:00 PM
This is bad advice some badly written games have tainted the hobby with over the years, yes. And even then, it's been misinterpreted from what it was actually supposed to mean originally. Which is that the DM was empowered to make up rulings for situations not covered by the rules. It was never intended to be "Calvinball".


"A DM only rolls the dice because of the noise they make." - Gary Gygax

So yeah, nah.


I mean, doing 1 retroactively taints the entire campaign.

Yeah, we play different games.


Really, though, fudging isn't the biggest problem here. I mean, I think it ruins the entire game and I'd certainly immediately stop playing with any DM who did it. But the biggest problem is lying about it. If you know your players have a problem with fudging (as any good player does) and you do it anyway and pretend you didn't then you're actively a bad person, at least in this context.

Help, I fudge dice rolls to entertain my friends and help us all tell great stories and have fun in our spare time AND IM GOING TO HELL FOR IT!

I also do magic on the weekends and I deceive my audience to their amusement and entertainment. I even use TRICK CARDS sometimes and other nefarious lies.

IM A MONSTER!

If I ever find myself DMing you, I'll assuredly roll my dice for you in the open. We solid?

Talakeal
2019-01-02, 03:33 PM
@ Malifice:

I don't think I am a bad DM either, but I also dont think I am a great DM. I am good at the creative side of it, but the entertainer part of it which requires me to read people on the fly is just not a skill I have, and so I generally Try and stay within my comfort zone to avoid the slide into bad DM. I have played with that guy too many times and it always sucks, typically in the form of a control freak with no poker face who thinks he is weaving an amazng experiance for his group of players.


The idea to use narrative terms for character creation to introduce new players into the game was an experiment on my part and, imo, seems to have worked out well. But either eay, its in the past now, and the only persom who had a problem with it was a veteran player rather than one of the newbies it was designed for.

Talking to that veteran player, it seems he was really less upset about me filling out his sheet for him than he was that the point buy we were using didnt allow players to start off with extremely high or extremely low stats.
I offered to let him reroll his character, but all he eants to make is a min-maxxed to the extreme character who overshadows the rest of the party when up against a problem that can be solved by blasting and is dead weight the rest of the time and who can no longer fulfill the role in the party that he asked to take during session zero.
The problem isnt rebulding, its bringing me a character that I would almost certainly veto regardless of the character creation system we are using.


On the subject of random encounters:
This is a hex-crawl / sand box campaign, it does not have adventures as such.

Also, I literally do not see how random encounters can cause the 15 minute adventuring day unless you are playing in a system that allows rope trick cheese ormthe like, which I am not.

Morgaln
2019-01-02, 03:41 PM
"A DM only rolls the dice because of the noise they make." - Gary Gygax

So yeah, nah.



Yeah, we play different games.



Help, I fudge dice rolls to entertain my friends and help us all tell great stories and have fun in our spare time AND IM GOING TO HELL FOR IT!

I also do magic on the weekends and I deceive my audience to their amusement and entertainment. I even use TRICK CARDS sometimes and other nefarious lies.

IM A MONSTER!

If I ever find myself DMing you, I'll assuredly roll my dice for you in the open. We solid?

Hello, my name is Morgaln and I fudge die rolls. Wait, is this the DM support group?

But in seriousness, I think I'm somewhere in the middle between the extremes here. My campaigns are heavily geared toward cinematic story-telling, with comparatively low amounts of dice rolling. When I do roll dice, I almost always go with what I rolled, but there is one rule, that I have also stated very clearly to my players: Characters do not die due to random die rolls. The death of a protagonist is a momentous occasion that doesn't just occur randomly; it should be at a point in a story where it means something, and it should be, in part at least, the decision of the player to have this character die for something. Therefore I will fudge rolls if it means the difference between unconsciousness or death. Note that I mostly DM World of Darkness, where a single bad roll can kill a character at full health no matter how powerful they are, so this comes up more often than it probably does in D&D and similar games. In the case of non-combat examples (i. e. jumping over a gorge), I will very clearly state that this is likely to kill the character if they fail, but these are rare since my player prefer realistic approach to situations like these.

I will stick with my rolls, and they mean something. For example, if I make an alertness roll, I genuinely want to know whether that guard heard the PC or whether their stealth roll was good enough to remain hidden. I see no reason to pretend I made a role on some encounter table when I didn't. I'm curious what you and/or your players gain from that pretense and how it makes the game better than admitting you've planned out the encounter in the first place, Malifice.

Malifice
2019-01-02, 03:45 PM
Also, I literally do not see how random encounters can cause the 15 minute adventuring day unless you are playing in a system that allows rope trick cheese ormthe like, which I am not.

After the encounter with the Revenenant how many more encounters did they/ could they have?

By having them deal with a random deadly encounter they were forced to either Nova (meaning they would be forced to rest) to survive (adventuring day over) or they get party wiped (adventuring day over).

Its like a house rule that pushes a level of Exhaustion on a downed PC. It just encourages the PCs to go away and rest overnight once dropped.

Time limited encounters work better. You can push several encounters between a long rest at them, which is generally better than one swingy deadly encounter.

Im running ToA in 5E at the moment which is a sandbox, and I deliberately use pre-ordained random encounters (there is actually a booklet made with 60 or so pregenerated encounters in it) plus some of my own design, plus the occasional roll on the charts at the back of the book (the roll only puts me in the ball park of what encounter I'll use - Ill look up and down the list of encounters starting at what I rolled, and pick one that works the best).

The main gig is to get the PCs to pre-ordained adventure locations (one of the many mini dungeons or encounter areas in the module) where they're put on the doom clock and expected to overcome those 6 or so encounters in a single long rest.

GloatingSwine
2019-01-02, 04:05 PM
I will stick with my rolls, and they mean something. For example, if I make an alertness roll, I genuinely want to know whether that guard heard the PC or whether their stealth roll was good enough to remain hidden. I see no reason to pretend I made a role on some encounter table when I didn't. I'm curious what you and/or your players gain from that pretense and how it makes the game better than admitting you've planned out the encounter in the first place, Malifice.


Pretend rolling on an encounter table seems to be GMing as theatre.

Rolling to see if there is going to be an encounter and if there is pulling up something pre-prepared and appropriate to the environment and other ongoing events in an adventure if there happens to be one allows the benefit of both the tension of "if we take too long we will encounter extra hazards" and not having to faff about and prepare a wide range of things that stretch the context of the current activity.

Remember you probably don't need more than two, three at a push, random encounters for a session. Maybe even none. Don't have a big table, just a few to play out if events unfold that way.

Talakeal
2019-01-02, 04:42 PM
After the encounter with the Revenenant how many more encounters did they/ could they have?

By having them deal with a random deadly encounter they were forced to either Nova (meaning they would be forced to rest) to survive (adventuring day over) or they get party wiped (adventuring day over).

Its like a house rule that pushes a level of Exhaustion on a downed PC. It just encourages the PCs to go away and rest overnight once dropped.

Time limited encounters work better. You can push several encounters between a long rest at them, which is generally better than one swingy deadly encounter.

Im running ToA in 5E at the moment which is a sandbox, and I deliberately use pre-ordained random encounters (there is actually a booklet made with 60 or so pregenerated encounters in it) plus some of my own design, plus the occasional roll on the charts at the back of the book (the roll only puts me in the ball park of what encounter I'll use - Ill look up and down the list of encounters starting at what I rolled, and pick one that works the best).

The main gig is to get the PCs to pre-ordained adventure locations (one of the many mini dungeons or encounter areas in the module) where they're put on the doom clock and expected to overcome those 6 or so encounters in a single long rest.

Try not to focus on the extremes.

The basic logic of a random encounter is the players have the choice between pushing on and facing encounters with good loot or rest up and risk encounters with monsters that give relatively little loot and have a good chance of consuming more resources than the rest would recover.

It turns should I rest into an actual choice, analyzing risk vs reward, rather than the no brainer that it is in modern editions of dungeons and dragons as well as incentivizing the players to play strategically and conserve their resources rather than just playing sloppy and going nova or reckless every encounter.

The deadly encounters arent really part of the standard random encounter system, and they dont serve any sort of mechanical purpose other thato reinforce that their are really cool and / or dangerus things out there and to shake up the status quo.

I really don't think resting after expending all of your resources for a single boss encounter is what is meant by the fifteen minute adventuring day.

GloatingSwine
2019-01-02, 05:26 PM
I really don't think resting after expending all of your resources for a single boss encounter is what is meant by the fifteen minute adventuring day.

It kind of is.

The fifteen minute adventuring day is when players want to make sure they're at maximum resources all the time, so they keep stopping to top up no matter how much they've actually done.


Random encounters in general do a few things.

They promote the idea that the world is a separate construct and not everything is determined by the GM, because they clearly happen or don't based on a dice roll.

They track the passage of time. (I like the Angry GM's time pool system. Every 10 minutes* put 1D6 in the time pool, which is a glass or something in the middle of the table, at the end of an hour or if something that might cause an encounter happens like the players making an ungodly noise or camping in the middle of the dungeon floor or whatever, roll whatever's in the pool and if you get any 1s then random encounter happens)

They give an incentive to the players not to waste time. Sure, they could search every single door for traps and room for hidden doors or treasure, but spending time doing that produces random encounter rolls and so drains resources.

And yeah, you can use them to break up excessive resting, but if your players aren't trained to be paranoid about their resources by swingy combats they probably won't do that anyway.



* Or appropriate time interval to the activity.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-02, 05:31 PM
It kind of is.

The fifteen minute adventuring day is when players want to make sure they're at maximum resources all the time, so they keep stopping to top up no matter how much they've actually done.

The point is resting means more rolls on the random encounter table. If you stop to rest after every fight then you're going to be getting in many more fights than you would otherwise if you kept moving.

geppetto
2019-01-03, 03:35 AM
"Cheat at the game and lie about it". That's the advice you're giving.

I think what he's saying is your not shooting craps. You cant cheat. Your telling a collaborative story with friends and the point is to enjoy the telling of that story, not to beat the house (GM).

Course I fudge all the time too. Random chance does not control my table, the people sitting around it do.

With that said we all have our own rules. I dont keep track of my players hit points in combat, thats up to them. So if a baddie drops someone then down they go. I might fudge attack rolls to adjust drama a little or NPC hit points for tempo but not PC hit points or usually skill checks. Failure and death are important parts of a good adventure story.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-03, 03:47 AM
I think what he's saying is your not shooting craps. You cant cheat. Your telling a collaborative story with friends and the point is to enjoy the telling of that story, not to beat the house (GM).

Course I fudge all the time too. Random chance does not control my table, the people sitting around it do.

And if you want to be bad at RPGs then that's fine. Being bad at RPGs is no sin. What is a sin is lying to the other players about it and claiming that you're not fudging dice when you actually are. Because consent is important.

geppetto
2019-01-03, 03:55 AM
And if you want to be bad at RPGs then that's fine. Being bad at RPGs is no sin. What is a sin is lying to the other players about it and claiming that you're not fudging dice when you actually are. Because consent is important.

No the illusion of consent is important.

And the only way to be bad at RPG's is to not create an enjoyable time. Something that has never been a problem in my 20 years of GMing. Maybe your crappy gamist attitude is actually the problem?

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-03, 04:08 AM
No the illusion of consent is important.

"Lying to your friends is okay so long as you get away with it"

Maybe you play with dumb players?

AMFV
2019-01-03, 05:08 AM
"Lying to your friends is okay so long as you get away with it"

Maybe you play with dumb players?

There are plenty of games where "lying to your friends" is a fundamental part of the game. Poker, for example. In D&D there are many many scenarios where a DM is expected to mislead or deceive other players. The DM's primary responsibility isn't just to create a fun world but to create an interesting experience for the players and arbitrate the rules.

Now if you find yourself fudging a lot or bending the rules a bunch, maybe you should be playing in a different system but occasionally bending the rules is not even a little bit of a problem. And acting like it isn't inherent in the design of most RPGs is ridiculous, it's like claiming that bluffing in poker is "lying to your friends".

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-03, 05:13 AM
There are plenty of games where "lying to your friends" is a fundamental part of the game. Poker, for example. In D&D there are many many scenarios where a DM is expected to mislead or deceive other players. The DM's primary responsibility isn't just to create a fun world but to create an interesting experience for the players and arbitrate the rules.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a situation in which the player says "I'm not okay with you fudging dice. Please either don't do it, or tell me right now that you're going to do it so I know not to play in your game." Acceptable responses include:

"Okay. I won't do it if you feel that way about it."
or
"I'm sorry. I think fudging is an important DM tool and I'll be doing it when I feel it is necessary".

Not acceptable is "Okay. I won't." And then doing it anyway.

If you have (bad) players that are okay with you fudging dice then more power to you. I'd run for the hills, but you're certainly welcome to be bad at RPGs together, so long as you have informed consent about it.

AMFV
2019-01-03, 05:25 AM
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a situation in which the player says "I'm not okay with you fudging dice. Please either don't do it, or tell me right now that you're going to do it so I know not to play in your game." Acceptable responses include:

How does the player know that I'm fudging dice? Is this a conversation that comes up often in games you have? I mean I've run dozens of games for friends IRL and dozens of games for folks online, and it's come up, like maybe one time, and that was only when I was chatting about player death.



"Okay. I won't do it if you feel that way about it."

That is one way to go about it, but again, this is probably not going to come up in-game.



"I'm sorry. I think fudging is an important DM tool and I'll be doing it when I feel it is necessary".

I'd normally say something like this, sometimes I'll mention it at the start of a campaign, but generally I don't find it necessary.



Not acceptable is "Okay. I won't." And then doing it anyway.

What if I later change my mind? What if I'm like "the rules are cool with it, but this guy needs that belief that I'm not doing it?" Like if somebody needs to believe that I'm not fudging any rolls to have fun, I'm going to convince him I'm not, not because I'm a ****, but because my responsibility is to maximize enjoyment.



If you have (bad) players that are okay with you fudging dice then more power to you. I'd run for the hills, but you're certainly welcome to be bad at RPGs together, so long as you have informed consent about it.

See THIS sentence is the problem, this is where your attempt to act like you're not judging people as liars, who choose to fudge falls apart. Also "fudging" doesn't make players bad players or make me a bad DM. Let's say I fudge on an encounter table, I roll for a random encounter and there are dozens of encounters that could be fun and advance the plot, but when the dice come up, I think to myself, "I know I rolled an 11, but the encounter that would have happened if I rolled a 12 looks much more fun" this is an actual thing I've done. When I rolled the dice, I had no preference, but when I was reading the encounter table to see what the result was, then I made a snap decision.

Cozzer
2019-01-03, 05:37 AM
What if I later change my mind?

You are allowed to say "I changed my mind, that's how things are going to be from now on". :smalltongue: The fact that you said something in the past doesn't bind you forever.


my responsibility is to maximize enjoyment

I agree, but in this case wouldn't that mean not starting a group under false pretenses, giving both you and the other player the chance of finding someone who actually likes to play the same way as you instead of wasting time lying/being lied to? I mean, your reasoning is solid only on the assumption that you can't find any other player ever, and the player who doesn't like fudging can't find any other GM ever.

I mean, I have no strong opinions about fudging rolls but I would still be pretty angry if I realized the GM pulled such a trick on me. I'm an adult, and I definitely don't need anybody who thinks they know better than me how I'm supposed to have fun.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-03, 05:46 AM
How does the player know that I'm fudging dice? Is this a conversation that comes up often in games you have? I mean I've run dozens of games for friends IRL and dozens of games for folks online, and it's come up, like maybe one time, and that was only when I was chatting about player death.

It doesn't come up for me because I either roll all dice in the open, or I'm playing games where the GM never rolls anything anyway.


What if I later change my mind? What if I'm like "the rules are cool with it, but this guy needs that belief that I'm not doing it?" Like if somebody needs to believe that I'm not fudging any rolls to have fun, I'm going to convince him I'm not, not because I'm a ****, but because my responsibility is to maximize enjoyment.

Then you tell him that. It also makes you kind of a jerk because now he's in a position where he either has to suck it up or quit in the middle of something he's invested actual time and effort in at this point. But sure, whatever. You're allowed to change your mind about stuff.


See THIS sentence is the problem, this is where your attempt to act like you're not judging people as liars, who choose to fudge falls apart.

I've never said I'm not judging you. If you fudge dice in an RPG I'm judging you super hard. This is me shaking my head at you for being "bad at RPGs" across the internet right now. My opinion here also doesn't matter. If you have a group of players that's all fine with fudging then what I think genuinely doesn't matter. People do all sorts of things in life that I judge them for but isn't actually "wrong".

But if you know someone isn't okay with it and you do it anyway behind their back then yes, that is actually wrong. That is a bad thing you are doing.

Pelle
2019-01-03, 05:46 AM
What if I'm like "the rules are cool with it, but this guy needs that belief that I'm not doing it?" Like if somebody needs to believe that I'm not fudging any rolls to have fun, I'm going to convince him I'm not, not because I'm a ****, but because my responsibility is to maximize enjoyment.


So what you are saying is that you know better than the player himself what he actually enjoys. Maybe that's true, but it sounds very disrespectful.

If the player says "No, I really want you to keep that 11 and have a boring encounter, than you changing it to a 12 for a fun one", who are you to question his preferences? Rather just say that for the sake of the fun of everyone in the group you will reserve the possibility to change the result if you think it will improve the experience.

I love board games where players are supposed to lie to each other (The Resistance, ONUW, etc), but they are no fun if the players participating don't understand that it is allowed to lie, it's playing under false premise.

AMFV
2019-01-03, 07:09 AM
So what you are saying is that you know better than the player himself what he actually enjoys. Maybe that's true, but it sounds very disrespectful.

It's not really, people are notoriously bad at figuring out exactly what they'll enjoy. Being honest about that will definitely help you.



If the player says "No, I really want you to keep that 11 and have a boring encounter, than you changing it to a 12 for a fun one", who are you to question his preferences? Rather just say that for the sake of the fun of everyone in the group you will reserve the possibility to change the result if you think it will improve the experience.

Here's the thing, the player will NEVER know if you've done that. A player should never know if you're doing a random encounter, a scripted encounter, or part of a pre-written adventure. A big part of your job as a DM is to blend it to where they can't tell if you're improvising, and sometimes even to where they can't tell what has plot significance until later. This also allows you to add things to the plot, make things significant that weren't before.

Take the 11 or 12. Let's say that you're playing a campaign with political intrigue, the 11 encounter would be something like 1d4 wolves or something. The 12 encounter is 1d4 bandits. So you say "Okay, if I put the bandits in there the players might decide that they're involved, or I might later decide that they're involved in the main plot." So that's why you might change things, to make things better.

As far as "who am I to question his preferences?" I am the person who is designing the scope nature and encounters in the campaign. I reserve every right to change up any encounter as I see fit. Random encounter tables aren't the law, they're things to help a DM produce random encounters, the vast majority of encounters should be non-random, in most games. So you're just changing something from a random encounter to a semi-scripted one.



I love board games where players are supposed to lie to each other (The Resistance, ONUW, etc), but they are no fun if the players participating don't understand that it is allowed to lie, it's playing under false premise.

But the thing is that a DM isn't a player in the same sense that you're all players in "The Resistance". The DM has a unique role that means that they already have different rules that apply to them, which is typically documented in the rules for almost every game. Now sometimes they have less legroom to work with, but typically because their goal isn't to "win" by rolling high and dominating the encounter, that would mean that "cheating" isn't exactly the same for them, since they aren't directly competing with the players.


It doesn't come up for me because I either roll all dice in the open, or I'm playing games where the GM never rolls anything anyway.

I don't roll dice in the open as a DM, ever. Not even because of fudging but because players aren't always aware if they succeeded. If a player knows instantly if his bluff has worked, that'll change his experience, and for the worse. If a player knows that his stealth roll wasn't good enough, his tactics will change drastically. So I roll behind a screen so that I can help to preserve the integrity of the game.



Then you tell him that. It also makes you kind of a jerk because now he's in a position where he either has to suck it up or quit in the middle of something he's invested actual time and effort in at this point. But sure, whatever. You're allowed to change your mind about stuff.

Yes, I am.



I've never said I'm not judging you. If you fudge dice in an RPG I'm judging you super hard. This is me shaking my head at you for being "bad at RPGs" across the internet right now. My opinion here also doesn't matter. If you have a group of players that's all fine with fudging then what I think genuinely doesn't matter. People do all sorts of things in life that I judge them for but isn't actually "wrong".

Eh, and I'm judging you for letting players know if they were able to successfully hide, I'm judging you for taking random encounter tables as a sort of law instead of being willing to improvise or script encounters to be better. If you are bound by the rules so completely that you literally cannot break them, you are not being the best DM. If you could be replaced by googling the rules and rolling on tables, why are you even there.



But if you know someone isn't okay with it and you do it anyway behind their back then yes, that is actually wrong. That is a bad thing you are doing.

Not necessarily. If somebody is drunk and I hide their car keys from them, that's not "wrong", even if they aren't okay with that. Agency doesn't trump moral correctness.


You are allowed to say "I changed my mind, that's how things are going to be from now on". :smalltongue: The fact that you said something in the past doesn't bind you forever.

This is true, but you can't say that if you change your mind in the moment, so you have that one moment where you say "okay this is some BS for the players, I'm going to fudge this roll" and so you do, but if you're like "Okay, dudes, I'll be fudging from now on", they'll know you have, and so that's a problem.



I agree, but in this case wouldn't that mean not starting a group under false pretenses, giving both you and the other player the chance of finding someone who actually likes to play the same way as you instead of wasting time lying/being lied to? I mean, your reasoning is solid only on the assumption that you can't find any other player ever, and the player who doesn't like fudging can't find any other GM ever.

Ah, see this is I think a difference between people who play mostly with strangers and people who play mostly with friends. I play games with people I'm already friends with, not with people I met to play a game. It means that there's a lot more compromise of tastes going on.

The Insanity
2019-01-03, 07:15 AM
Fudging is a gateway drug. And drugs are bad.

zinycor
2019-01-03, 07:30 AM
Fudging is a gateway drug. And drugs are bad.

Again, that's a debate out of itself xD

Pelle
2019-01-03, 07:40 AM
Take the 11 or 12. Let's say that you're playing a campaign with political intrigue, the 11 encounter would be something like 1d4 wolves or something. The 12 encounter is 1d4 bandits. So you say "Okay, if I put the bandits in there the players might decide that they're involved, or I might later decide that they're involved in the main plot." So that's why you might change things, to make things better.

As far as "who am I to question his preferences?" I am the person who is designing the scope nature and encounters in the campaign. I reserve every right to change up any encounter as I see fit. Random encounter tables aren't the law, they're things to help a DM produce random encounters, the vast majority of encounters should be non-random, in most games. So you're just changing something from a random encounter to a semi-scripted one.


Those are all good reasons for not wanting to be bound by the results of rolling on encounter tables. That's NOT what people are reacting to, however. The issue is you not wanting to just say the above to the player in a session zero, but rather having the player play under false pretenses. Just say to the player that you acknowledge their preferences, but due to compromises with the rest of the table you can't promise to always adhere to the rolled results. In session zero, get buy-in to you maybe sometime changing that 11 to a 12 if it's necessary, and you are good. You don't need to announce it as it happens, you already have consent.

I also use a mix of scripted, semi-scripted, random and improvised encounters, that's not problematic. I admit this to the players though, but I don't divulge what is what. I also have NPCs lie to the PCs, and try to be convincing enough myself to fool the players, but the players know that this can happen. Letting the players know what kind of game they are playing before it starts is only fair.

Morgaln
2019-01-03, 07:46 AM
It doesn't come up for me because I either roll all dice in the open, or I'm playing games where the GM never rolls anything anyway.



Then you tell him that. It also makes you kind of a jerk because now he's in a position where he either has to suck it up or quit in the middle of something he's invested actual time and effort in at this point. But sure, whatever. You're allowed to change your mind about stuff.



I've never said I'm not judging you. If you fudge dice in an RPG I'm judging you super hard. This is me shaking my head at you for being "bad at RPGs" across the internet right now. My opinion here also doesn't matter. If you have a group of players that's all fine with fudging then what I think genuinely doesn't matter. People do all sorts of things in life that I judge them for but isn't actually "wrong".

But if you know someone isn't okay with it and you do it anyway behind their back then yes, that is actually wrong. That is a bad thing you are doing.


I resent this statement. People are not "bad at RPGs" just because they play differently than you. RPGs are not like other games. They are, by intent, malleable; the golden rule is that you are allowed to change the rules. There are a million ways to play RPGs, and all of them are correct. Some play RPG as a tactical experience that pits players vs the DM; others prefer a story-oriented approach with barely any or even no dice rolls. Some like linear stories with a clear progress from A to B; others find more enjoyment in a sandbox approach. Some like to have the randomness of the dice be an integral part of how things turn out, while others prefer to have the story trump die rolls. None of these, or any of the many other ways to play RPGs is inherently superior to the others. They are all correct in their own way. The trick is not to find the one right way to play an RPG, but to find a group that enjoys playing RPGs the same way you do.

I do agree with you on one point, though. The style of play needs to be clear to everyone involved. If you do something that is not in the rules (goes for house rules as well as things like fudging dice), you need to be upfront about it and let the players know beforehand that this is going to happen in your game, and to let players opt out if they don't agree with it. Telling the players you don't fudge dice and then doing it anyway is wrong in my eyes as well.

Cozzer
2019-01-03, 08:10 AM
Ah, see this is I think a difference between people who play mostly with strangers and people who play mostly with friends. I play games with people I'm already friends with, not with people I met to play a game. It means that there's a lot more compromise of tastes going on.

I only play with friends too, which makes me less inclined to lie to them, not more. :smalltongue:


This is true, but you can't say that if you change your mind in the moment, so you have that one moment where you say "okay this is some BS for the players, I'm going to fudge this roll" and so you do, but if you're like "Okay, dudes, I'll be fudging from now on", they'll know you have, and so that's a problem.

Well you know, you can just be honest from the beginning and say "I won't fudge rolls unless there's some extremely unlikely chain of circumstances that you guys couldn't predict and would just make things less fun for everybody". It's my usual attitude towards fudging. What I mean is, I'm not against fudging; it's just this "lie to my players/friends for their own good" thing that irks me the wrong way.

AMFV
2019-01-03, 08:16 AM
Fudging is a gateway drug. And drugs are bad.

What does fudging lead to though?


Those are all good reasons for not wanting to be bound by the results of rolling on encounter tables. That's NOT what people are reacting to, however. The issue is you not wanting to just say the above to the player in a session zero, but rather having the player play under false pretenses. Just say to the player that you acknowledge their preferences, but due to compromises with the rest of the table you can't promise to always adhere to the rolled results. In session zero, get buy-in to you maybe sometime changing that 11 to a 12 if it's necessary, and you are good. You don't need to announce it as it happens, you already have consent.

It doesn't usually come up for me, that's the thing. I don't typically mention it ahead of time, since again most of the systems I play with have Rule Zero, which gives the DM permission to alter the rules as needed.



I also use a mix of scripted, semi-scripted, random and improvised encounters, that's not problematic. I admit this to the players though, but I don't divulge what is what. I also have NPCs lie to the PCs, and try to be convincing enough myself to fool the players, but the players know that this can happen. Letting the players know what kind of game they are playing before it starts is only fair.

The thing is that "fudging" doesn't fundamentally alter the "kind" of game that's being played. And in games where fudging is likely, the DM will already be established as somebody who is not only operating under a fundamentally different set of rules and not only that is allowed to alter the rules.

I have ran multiple different styles of game and my views on fudging stay the same, if I play in a OD&D dungeon crawl, I'll fudge the rules and the dice when it's appropriate. The same holds true for a story based WoD game, or a 3.5esque game.


I only play with friends too, which makes me less inclined to lie to them, not more. :smalltongue:

The thing is that you guys are treating this as though it's a BIG lie, but it's a minor thing at best. That's the thing. It's not changing the way the game is played that much, because in most RPGs DMs are not required to follow the rules completely and are given some sort of permissions to alter the rules. Now admittedly there are systems where that's not the case, but those are kind of rare.



Well you know, you can just be honest from the beginning and say "I won't fudge rolls unless there's some extremely unlikely chain of circumstances that you guys couldn't predict and would just make things less fun for everybody". It's my usual attitude towards fudging. What I mean is, I'm not against fudging; it's just this "lie to my players/friends for their own good" thing that irks me the wrong way.

Like I said it doesn't usually come up for me. The games I play most often, Pathfinder and D&D, have rule zero permissions and so the ability of the DM to alter the rules (and therefore allow fudging) is inherent in the system. So I don't see that it's something that needs to be discussed. I think that even discussing it can be something that's a problem for people, it makes it seem like it's open for discussion (when it may or may not be), and it makes it more obvious when it happens.

Cozzer
2019-01-03, 08:21 AM
@AMFV: Hmm, well, that's true too. Let's say I wouldn't bring it up myself and would assume my players trusted me with choosing whether/when/how much fudging is for the best. If one of the players asked me, though, I would be sincere, no matter how much my opinion and theirs differ.

Pelle
2019-01-03, 08:35 AM
It doesn't usually come up for me, that's the thing. I don't typically mention it ahead of time, since again most of the systems I play with have Rule Zero, which gives the DM permission to alter the rules as needed.

The thing is that "fudging" doesn't fundamentally alter the "kind" of game that's being played. And in games where fudging is likely, the DM will already be established as somebody who is not only operating under a fundamentally different set of rules and not only that is allowed to alter the rules.

I have ran multiple different styles of game and my views on fudging stay the same, if I play in a OD&D dungeon crawl, I'll fudge the rules and the dice when it's appropriate. The same holds true for a story based WoD game, or a 3.5esque game.


If the premise of the game is that the DM may fudge, and everybody understands that, you have consent - no problem. If they don't understand it, you don't have it. If everyone's expectations are unclear, better check then.

However, you earlier described lying to a player who explicitly wanted to play without fudging. That's not consent. The player is led to believe he is playing a game without Rule Zero or similar. Fudge all you want, but please don't lie to your friends about it maybe happening sometimes.

Malifice
2019-01-03, 10:31 AM
However, you earlier described lying to a player who explicitly wanted to play without fudging.

A player like the poster above that made such a demand of a DM likely wouldn't be welcome at my table. Not because of this reason in and of itself, but because he's the kind of guy (as DM) that would let a bad dice roll wipe out a party who had done nothing wrong, were engaged with the story, working collaboratively, and having fun for no other reason than gravity.

It tells me that our reasons for playing differ. He's trying to 'beat the DM' while the DM's definition of winning is 'ensuring his players have a good time'. I could just tell I have an antagonistic player on my hands there and then, and that it's almost certainly not going to work out.

But on the off chance I met a new player and he was explicitly clear on this point (he wanted all rolls out in the open for his character, thats how he preferred to play, and he gets more enjoyment out of randomly getting killed etc) then I'd likely consent.

Cozzer
2019-01-03, 10:48 AM
@Malifice: While I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, I think there's something important to mention. If a "single dice roll" risks wiping out "a party who had done nothing wrong", this means there's something extremely wrong either with the system or with how the adventure is built. (Unless the party being randomly wiped is part of the genre/basic gameplay, I guess, in which case fudging would be counterproductive anyway)

It's OK to fudge in that case, in my opinion, but after the fact the GM should ask themselves why the party, having done nothing wrong, was in such a situation. Fudging is a temporary bandage that keeps things going while you work out how to solve the underlying problems (houserules for the problematic parts of the system, better adventure/encounter design), not a solution to these problems nor an excuse to ignore them.

What I mean is, I think the best approach is to consider fudging a necessary evil. Don't let idealism prevent you from doing it when the alternative is worse, but the long-term goal should still be to put yourself in a situation where you don't need to do it anymore.

geppetto
2019-01-03, 11:07 AM
"Lying to your friends is okay so long as you get away with it"

Maybe you play with dumb players?

LOL my friends arent sitting around in a religious inquisition.

They know we are there to tell a story, its all fake. I hate to break it to you but we dont actually kill things and take their stuff or cast really real spells either.

The whole thing is and every action is one big fun lie.

The Glyphstone
2019-01-03, 11:19 AM
LOL my friends arent sitting around in a religious inquisition.

They know we are there to tell a story, its all fake. I hate to break it to you but we dont actually kill things and take their stuff or cast really real spells either.

The whole thing is and every action is one big fun lie.

There's a fairly big difference between lying and telling a story. If you don't distinguish between them...that's unusual.

Malifice
2019-01-03, 12:07 PM
@Malifice: While I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, I think there's something important to mention. If a "single dice roll" risks wiping out "a party who had done nothing wrong", this means there's something extremely wrong either with the system or with how the adventure is built. (Unless the party being randomly wiped is part of the genre/basic gameplay, I guess, in which case fudging would be counterproductive anyway)

By 'single dice roll' I mean an encounter that risks wiping the party (and ending the campaign) due to a series of bad rolls by them and/or 'good' rolls by the DM.

Fudging a roll to keep the Paladin 'up' an extra round or two so he has a chance to kill the monster and survive the TPK (or simply ruling his damage kills the monster when it really has 30 hit points left) is no different to not fudging the roll, the Paladin going down and (after a moments thought) stating... 'After some time you ll wake up on 1 HP in a dark cell...' (guarded only by a single incompetent henchman of course!).

The dice don't remove my ability to exercise narrative control over the campaign and game when necessary. They don't dictate to me how my game is ultimately run. I have discretion (indeed, an obligation to my players) over and above that of 'random number generator'. The dice are a tool, and nothing more or nothing less.

My players trust my discretion. They know I'm not out to get them (although sometimes I pretend I am). They know when I curse them for stomping an encounter (Im secretly pleased they did). The antagonism is friendly, they know I put work into the campaign for their enjoyment, and that being a DM is a long, tough and hard job. I'm firm but fair. They dont engage in petty alignment disputes, gaming the system, murder-hobism and so forth (because the game I run doesn't reward such behavior, and they're adults committed to creating a fun engaging co-operative experience).

On another level (and If I can say it without sounding up myself) they know they have an experienced DM who is pretty good at the job, and that good DMs are as rare as hens teeth.

They're also a great bunch of players.

I've been doing this caper for 35 years, and I shudder looking back at my earlier mistakes in the game (everything from DMNPCs that overshadow the party, fantasy heartbreakers, too-hard fantasy underground Vietnam DMing, let the dice fall where they may competitiveness with the players and worse. All the mistakes; I've made all of them). You live and learn. I've seen what works and what doesnt over 5 iterations of DnD and across dozens of different systems, hundreds of different groups, dozens of my own DMs (good and bad) 3 continents and 35 years of play.

Just my take. Maybe I secretly suck at it, and my players have been lying to me this whole time. Beats me.

AMFV
2019-01-03, 01:30 PM
@AMFV: Hmm, well, that's true too. Let's say I wouldn't bring it up myself and would assume my players trusted me with choosing whether/when/how much fudging is for the best. If one of the players asked me, though, I would be sincere, no matter how much my opinion and theirs differ.

Well for me it would depend on when they asked me. Like if it was immediately after a roll that I had altered or something, probably not. Just the same way that I probably wouldn't be immediately inclined to tell a player if an encounter was random padding or plot relevant (and I might change that). Basically there are some things that when you see behind the screen it makes the game worse for the players; In my experience, at least, that is the case.


If the premise of the game is that the DM may fudge, and everybody understands that, you have consent - no problem. If they don't understand it, you don't have it. If everyone's expectations are unclear, better check then.

Well it shouldn't come up, because your players should not know when you fudge rolls. Just like your players should not necessarily know about your encounter design. Letting them know about it is going to make for a worse experience. It's the same idea as if the players are rolling badly, or if they've burned more resources so you adjust the next encounter to not kill them, if you tell them it's going to be a problem.



However, you earlier described lying to a player who explicitly wanted to play without fudging. That's not consent. The player is led to believe he is playing a game without Rule Zero or similar. Fudge all you want, but please don't lie to your friends about it maybe happening sometimes.

You're acting as though a little fib about a game is equivalent to like a serious real lie. That's the issue here. If I tell somebody a sea story and exaggerate the size of the sea creatures involved it's technically a lie but not one that really matters. There's no money on the line here, it's not that big a deal.


@Malifice: While I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, I think there's something important to mention. If a "single dice roll" risks wiping out "a party who had done nothing wrong", this means there's something extremely wrong either with the system or with how the adventure is built. (Unless the party being randomly wiped is part of the genre/basic gameplay, I guess, in which case fudging would be counterproductive anyway)

Well the thing is that usually the "single die roll" comes at the very end of a long string of bad luck for the players. Imagine that you roll several critical hits in a row, that could be very bad for the players and isn't really something you can account, so you fudge the last one.



It's OK to fudge in that case, in my opinion, but after the fact the GM should ask themselves why the party, having done nothing wrong, was in such a situation. Fudging is a temporary bandage that keeps things going while you work out how to solve the underlying problems (houserules for the problematic parts of the system, better adventure/encounter design), not a solution to these problems nor an excuse to ignore them.

True, but you can't stop a run of bad luck, or that sort of thing. Fudging is normally something you can do as needed, but it's not a huge deal.



What I mean is, I think the best approach is to consider fudging a necessary evil. Don't let idealism prevent you from doing it when the alternative is worse, but the long-term goal should still be to put yourself in a situation where you don't need to do it anymore.

True, but you're probably not going to do that in any kind of system with a high granularity combat system, just because luck is not predictable.

Cozzer
2019-01-03, 02:09 PM
Well the thing is that usually the "single die roll" comes at the very end of a long string of bad luck for the players. Imagine that you roll several critical hits in a row, that could be very bad for the players and isn't really something you can account, so you fudge the last one.


True, but you can't stop a run of bad luck, or that sort of thing. Fudging is normally something you can do as needed, but it's not a huge deal.


True, but you're probably not going to do that in any kind of system with a high granularity combat system, just because luck is not predictable.

While I agree with the above quotes, I can't help but think that fudging rolls as needed is kind of a brute-force solution to this particular problem, and there must be some better, less arbitrary ways to deal with this kind of randomness without ruining the game. (Note that I've tried several rule tweaks to improve the situation but didn't find anything I feel 100% confortable with yet, so it's not like I'm claiming to be better at this than anyone).


Well for me it would depend on when they asked me. Like if it was immediately after a roll that I had altered or something, probably not. Just the same way that I probably wouldn't be immediately inclined to tell a player if an encounter was random padding or plot relevant (and I might change that). Basically there are some things that when you see behind the screen it makes the game worse for the players; In my experience, at least, that is the case.

Well, I agree that players don't get to ask about single rolls or events. If a player can't even trust me to be trying to do the best thing for the game and demands an answer, then we have a bigger problem than our opinions on fudging.

Arbane
2019-01-03, 03:50 PM
If you have a so-called 'plot' that isn't ENTIRELY BASED on random dice-rolls on tables tables tables tables tables, you are a filthy fudging liar and a TERRIBLE GM.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-03, 04:25 PM
I don't roll dice in the open as a DM, ever. Not even because of fudging but because players aren't always aware if they succeeded. If a player knows instantly if his bluff has worked, that'll change his experience, and for the worse. If a player knows that his stealth roll wasn't good enough, his tactics will change drastically. So I roll behind a screen so that I can help to preserve the integrity of the game.

Well if we're just going into me teaching you good GM practises at this point... Don't call for rolls when you aren't going to immediately make a decision based on the result of that roll. If you fail a bluff then you're going to know about it because the vizier sighs, annoyed, and casts White Fire on you. If you fail a stealth roll I will narrate forward until the results of that failed stealth roll become painfully apparent to you.


Not necessarily. If somebody is drunk and I hide their car keys from them, that's not "wrong", even if they aren't okay with that. Agency doesn't trump moral correctness.

Well we're broadening the scope of this now (and being absurd in the process because comparing someone drunk driving to someone wanting the GM to not be **** is pretty funny). But yes, if you hid a drunk person's car keys you should probably still be telling them "Hey. You're drunk. I took your keys. I'll give them back when you're sober." over lying and pretending you have no idea what they're talking about.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-03, 04:30 PM
What does fudging lead to though?

To be blunt, fudging is railroading. Fudging is saying "What I want to happen is more important than the rules of this game". If I can't trust you to play the game fairly then I don't see any point in using any of the rules at all. We can just sit down and listen to you tell us a story about what happens. It invalidates the entire game. If you fudge dice you are not trustworthy in any way and you're just wasting my time.


The thing is that you guys are treating this as though it's a BIG lie, but it's a minor thing at best. That's the thing. It's not changing the way the game is played that much, because in most RPGs DMs are not required to follow the rules completely and are given some sort of permissions to alter the rules. Now admittedly there are systems where that's not the case, but those are kind of rare.

The fact that some people care a great deal about this should be apparent to you by now. So let me say this again. If you fudge dice I will not play with you. This, in fact, makes lying about doing it a big damn lie.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-03, 04:33 PM
A player like the poster above that made such a demand of a DM likely wouldn't be welcome at my table. Not because of this reason in and of itself, but because he's the kind of guy (as DM) that would let a bad dice roll wipe out a party who had done nothing wrong, were engaged with the story, working collaboratively, and having fun for no other reason than gravity.

And everything you've posted has been a big red warning sign that I shouldn't touch your games with a ten foot pole. And now, through the magic of communication, we both know that and can avoid ever playing with each other. Which is why being honest about your (terrible) preferences is so helpful for all parties involved. Why on Earth would anyone think lying about your preferences is a good idea when we've just demonstrated how helpful this is?

Cluedrew
2019-01-03, 05:12 PM
What does fudging lead to though?Playing systems that don't suit your needs.

In my mind the desire to fudge dice usually comes from a system/expectations mismatch. Generally the system is harsher or more about gaming skill than weaving a story than what you are actually looking for. Fudging rolls is a bandage on that wound.

LankyOgre
2019-01-03, 05:16 PM
This thread seems to have moved on from when I last looked at.
I apologize if this has already been said, but I’ll throw my 2 cents in. As a player, my concern when I hear a GM say that they insist/depend/rely on fudging is that it negates my choices. If you’ve already decided which battles we win and which we lose, then why don’t you just tell me the story? This is slight hyperbole, but it’s what I hear when somebody insists that fudging is necessary. It starts to take the risk vs reward out of the game for me. I may be misinterpreting things though.

Florian
2019-01-03, 05:40 PM
I think there was actually some Mike Mearls quote about wanting to see the system running a game instead of the GM. Beyond that, purely personal opinion, something is already wrong when you have a competition-focused player in a team-oriented game, it´s time for the boot when said player then actually tries to sue the system to get into competition with the GM, whose job is an entirely different matter. Case of bye-bye and be done.

AMFV
2019-01-03, 05:49 PM
Well if we're just going into me teaching you good GM practises at this point... Don't call for rolls when you aren't going to immediately make a decision based on the result of that roll. If you fail a bluff then you're going to know about it because the vizier sighs, annoyed, and casts White Fire on you. If you fail a stealth roll I will narrate forward until the results of that failed stealth roll become painfully apparent to you.

If you are rolling in the open, the players will know immediately that they failed that stealth roll. That's the point you haven't even addressed. I mean if the Vizier is reacting violently to being lied to, then they'd know immediately but there are plenty of cases where somebody who has seen through your bluff isn't going to call you out right there and then. That's the advantage of rolling in secret, the players don't know what's going on, they don't know if they've failed or succeeded at their stealth check, hell if you're dropping dice often enough without them being actual rolls they might not even know when an actual roll is being made. Which is pretty crucial.

Also it allows you to roll for players in circumstances where they might not be aware of things. For example perception checks to notice hidden doors, objects, or creatures; Sense motive checks to discern lying, those are situations where the player's characters might have to make a check, but it's better for them if they don't know that there is a check being made.

The fact that you can't envision a scenario where somebody knows that they're being lied to and doesn't want to immediately reveal that they know is a problem.



Well we're broadening the scope of this now (and being absurd in the process because comparing someone drunk driving to someone wanting the GM to not be **** is pretty funny). But yes, if you hid a drunk person's car keys you should probably still be telling them "Hey. You're drunk. I took your keys. I'll give them back when you're sober." over lying and pretending you have no idea what they're talking about.

You have either never taken keys from a drunk guy, or you really like fighting drunk guys. You definitely should not tell them till the morning. Period. Because what's going to happen is that because drunk people cannot make decisions or think, they're going to want to get those keys.


To be blunt, fudging is railroading. Fudging is saying "What I want to happen is more important than the rules of this game". If I can't trust you to play the game fairly then I don't see any point in using any of the rules at all. We can just sit down and listen to you tell us a story about what happens. It invalidates the entire game. If you fudge dice you are not trustworthy in any way and you're just wasting my time.


What if those rules allow for the DM to alter those rules? Most of the games I've discussed do have sections for that, both for the DM setting difficulty classes as necessary or altering challenge numbers or whatever the equivalent in the system is. I'm not fudging the game I'm altering the results of one or two rolls.



The fact that some people care a great deal about this should be apparent to you by now. So let me say this again. If you fudge dice I will not play with you. This, in fact, makes lying about doing it a big damn lie.

Not really. Seriously you are blowing this out of proportion. There is no money on the line, there is no real danger, it's a game. And also as I've said, you probably would not realize that I was fudging rolls, I very rarely do, and if you were playing with me, I wouldn't tell you, because it is already covered under both rule zero and the DM's ability to alter the rules.


Playing systems that don't suit your needs.

In my mind the desire to fudge dice usually comes from a system/expectations mismatch. Generally the system is harsher or more about gaming skill than weaving a story than what you are actually looking for. Fudging rolls is a bandage on that wound.

No, fudging rolls is a way to deal with capricious fate, which is a thing that you can't always deal with. I've had sessions where I haven't rolled lower than a 15 as a DM, that screws players, every encounter is much harder than it's intended to be, and I've seen multiple 20s rolled in a row. That's something that is sometimes okay, but often is not.


This thread seems to have moved on from when I last looked at.
I apologize if this has already been said, but I’ll throw my 2 cents in. As a player, my concern when I hear a GM say that they insist/depend/rely on fudging is that it negates my choices. If you’ve already decided which battles we win and which we lose, then why don’t you just tell me the story? This is slight hyperbole, but it’s what I hear when somebody insists that fudging is necessary. It starts to take the risk vs reward out of the game for me. I may be misinterpreting things though.

Fudging isn't about negating your choices though, particularly not fudging in an encounter table (which is what was being described upthread). Also most people who fudge die rolls do not do so often. Like I think for me I average around one fudged roll every three or four sessions, maybe. It doesn't come up often.

Morgaln
2019-01-03, 06:00 PM
This thread seems to have moved on from when I last looked at.
I apologize if this has already been said, but I’ll throw my 2 cents in. As a player, my concern when I hear a GM say that they insist/depend/rely on fudging is that it negates my choices. If you’ve already decided which battles we win and which we lose, then why don’t you just tell me the story? This is slight hyperbole, but it’s what I hear when somebody insists that fudging is necessary. It starts to take the risk vs reward out of the game for me. I may be misinterpreting things though.

I can only talk about how I do this of course, but on the occasions where I do fudge dice, it doesn't change whether the characters win or lose the battle. It only means the difference between "alive but unconscious" and "dead." If the remaining characters can't win the battle on their own, they still lose, and the dice might well be responsible for that. But afterwards, the characters will still be around to deal with the ramifications of their loss, instead of the story being handed over to a new bunch of people. That way, I give my players the chance to roleplay a situation where they didn't accomplish their goals and have to come to terms with defeat. I (and my players) prefer that over just starting over with new characters, but I'm aware not everyone feels that way.
If I want my players to definitely succeed or fail at something, I will forego any dice rolls.

Interestingly, whether I do that at all or not also depends on what system I am playing. In my preferred system which I usually play (oWoD), I do the above, as I play it for the story more than anything else. If I do a D&D game I don't fudge rolls in general, as I choose D&D when I want a more tactical, combat-heavy gaming experience, and I don't consider fudging dice to be appropriate in that kind of scenario.


Well if we're just going into me teaching you good GM practises at this point... Don't call for rolls when you aren't going to immediately make a decision based on the result of that roll. If you fail a bluff then you're going to know about it because the vizier sighs, annoyed, and casts White Fire on you. If you fail a stealth roll I will narrate forward until the results of that failed stealth roll become painfully apparent to you.


A lot of time, I have people roll perception just to see if they notice some minor detail about a situation that might help them figure out something earlier or that will give them deeper insight into something. This will never be vital information, so it's not necessary for the players to have it. If they fail that roll, they will never know that they missed something, because I won't tell them and I won't let them know whether they succeeded or failed. I do make decisions there immediately, it's just that the players are not aware of that decision, and in that particular case, it adds to the realism because no one knows when they overlooked something in real life either. So not every roll should and will have an apparent effect to the players.

Arbane
2019-01-03, 07:31 PM
If you are rolling in the open, the players will know immediately that they failed that stealth roll.

"You don't find any traps."

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-03, 07:58 PM
If you are rolling in the open, the players will know immediately that they failed that stealth roll. That's the point you haven't even addressed.

I have addressed it. You haven't understood it. Once a player has failed a roll they do not get to make any more decisions until what happens because of that fail has happened.

"I want to sneak my way through the castle avoiding the villainous guards until I reach my true love's chambers."

"Make a stealth roll, opposed by the observation of the guards in the castle."

*rolls happen, NPCs win*

"All right. It's all going great, you've slipped in the side door and made your way through the audience chambers. But as you're ascending the staircase to the third floor you hear someone shouting an alarm down the corridor to your left. There's a pounding of feet and the clatter of armour rapidly approaching your position. What do you do?"


I mean if the Vizier is reacting violently to being lied to, then they'd know immediately but there are plenty of cases where somebody who has seen through your bluff isn't going to call you out right there and then. That's the advantage of rolling in secret, the players don't know what's going on, they don't know if they've failed or succeeded at their stealth check, hell if you're dropping dice often enough without them being actual rolls they might not even know when an actual roll is being made. Which is pretty crucial.

*the RP has been played through. The PCs have made a believable effort in lying to the vizier* Now at the end of the scene:
"All right. Let's see if he bought it. Roll Falsehood vs his Will of 6"
*rolls happen, PCs fail*
"The meeting concludes. The vizier smiles benevolently at you all and shakes your hands, thanking you earnestly for bringing this matter to his attention and you depart."
*other things may or may not happen between these events, but at this point it doesn't matter. The vizier has already sent word for his agents to move. As the PCs depart the castle they can already see the smoke in the sky above Maria's estate. The vizier is a dangerous man to cross and they knew that going in*

These are just random examples with very little thought or detail put into them but I think the point is clear enough.


The fact that you can't envision a scenario where somebody knows that they're being lied to and doesn't want to immediately reveal that they know is a problem.

Of course I can envision it. What I'm telling you is "structure your game in a better more interesting way and it won't matter if the players know or not".


What if those rules allow for the DM to alter those rules? Most of the games I've discussed do have sections for that, both for the DM setting difficulty classes as necessary or altering challenge numbers or whatever the equivalent in the system is. I'm not fudging the game I'm altering the results of one or two rolls.

Yeah it's unfortunate that some badly written games gave out a lot of bad advice. It certainly muddies the waters. The hobby is just going to have to learn to get over it, though, and a lot of progress has been made on writing better designed games in the past twenty years or so.


Not really. Seriously you are blowing this out of proportion. There is no money on the line, there is no real danger, it's a game. And also as I've said, you probably would not realize that I was fudging rolls, I very rarely do, and if you were playing with me, I wouldn't tell you, because it is already covered under both rule zero and the DM's ability to alter the rules.

You may or may not get away with it. I'm skeptical. Most people really aren't as subtle as they think they are. But I am telling you right now. Even if you get away with it, you are doing a bad thing. And you should be ashamed of yourself. If you're going to cheat at a game, make that clear in advance so people with better taste can avoid playing with you.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-01-03, 08:10 PM
A lot of time, I have people roll perception just to see if they notice some minor detail about a situation that might help them figure out something earlier or that will give them deeper insight into something. This will never be vital information, so it's not necessary for the players to have it. If they fail that roll, they will never know that they missed something, because I won't tell them and I won't let them know whether they succeeded or failed. I do make decisions there immediately, it's just that the players are not aware of that decision, and in that particular case, it adds to the realism because no one knows when they overlooked something in real life either. So not every roll should and will have an apparent effect to the players.

Personally I don't like making rolls with low stakes. I feel like it's a waste of everyone's time. If there's some cool minor detail here I'd just tell them.

But I don't see anything inherently wrong with saying something like "Make a DC 15 spot check and I'll give you a little something extra." Making fake rolls for ~paranoia~ is just dumb and obnoxious though.

Cluedrew
2019-01-03, 09:11 PM
No, fudging rolls is a way to deal with capricious fate, which is a thing that you can't always deal with.Not in D&D, but in D&D you are supposed to shut up and take it. If you don't want random twists of fate to be painful, I think the better solution is to play a system that doesn't have such harsh twists of fate.

AMFV
2019-01-03, 09:27 PM
"You don't find any traps."

If a player sees that you have rolled a 17 or an 18 or a 20, because you are rolling in the open... Then they will know that it is very unlikely that they are being unobserved if they rolled a four or a five or even a nine or a ten or an eleven. That's why you don't roll in the open.


I have addressed it. You haven't understood it. Once a player has failed a roll they do not get to make any more decisions until what happens because of that fail has happened.

So you are incapable of imagining a scenario where the bad stuff might happen later and not be immediately apparent?



"I want to sneak my way through the castle avoiding the villainous guards until I reach my true love's chambers."

That would be a case where the players might know what happens afterwards.



"Make a stealth roll, opposed by the observation of the guards in the castle."

In your version the players KNOW they have failed the roll, because they see it, in my version they don't know.



*rolls happen, NPCs win*

So in your version the outcome you are about to present is the ONLY possible outcome, because the players are aware of things that happen as a result of their roles, even if they would not have been otherwise.



"All right. It's all going great, you've slipped in the side door and made your way through the audience chambers. But as you're ascending the staircase to the third floor you hear someone shouting an alarm down the corridor to your left. There's a pounding of feet and the clatter of armour rapidly approaching your position. What do you do?"


In your version, that's about the only outcome. Let's take a situation where your version doesn't work. "A few days later you receive a message from somebody in a tavern, I saw where you went that night, and who you were with, I'd like credits for my silence."

Now in your version, the players are exactly aware of what was observed and what is known by that NPC. There is no way to have the blackmailer be bluffing about what they actually know, because the PCs know what they know. There is no way for the players not to be planning for that sort of thing in your version, because they know they were observed.

That's why rolling in the open is bad, because sometimes the outcome of an action is not immediate combat or what-not.



*the RP has been played through. The PCs have made a believable effort in lying to the vizier* Now at the end of the scene:
"All right. Let's see if he bought it. Roll Falsehood vs his Will of 6"
*rolls happen, PCs fail*
"The meeting concludes. The vizier smiles benevolently at you all and shakes your hands, thanking you earnestly for bringing this matter to his attention and you depart."
*other things may or may not happen between these events, but at this point it doesn't matter. The vizier has already sent word for his agents to move. As the PCs depart the castle they can already see the smoke in the sky above Maria's estate. The vizier is a dangerous man to cross and they knew that going in*

THE PLAYERS KNOW THEY FAILED. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS TRYING TO AVOID. Literally, you are proving the point. The players make that roll vs. the will of 6, they know they failed, there is no option for it to be a surprise later, you're removing a significant dramatic control because you want to appear fair.



These are just random examples with very little thought or detail put into them but I think the point is clear enough.


Clearly not a lot of thought, because they literally show my point, rolling in the open is going to rob you of the ability to add dramatic tension and surpris



Of course I can envision it. What I'm telling you is "structure your game in a better more interesting way and it won't matter if the players know or not".

And your examples show that you can't do that, since in your situation you haven't done that. You've only managed to avoid things that need an immediate response, not allowed for things that would be possibly significant many sessions later.


Personally I don't like making rolls with low stakes. I feel like it's a waste of everyone's time. If there's some cool minor detail here I'd just tell them.

The thing is that this scenario lets the players know immediately what the stakes are in any given scenario, my way allows for the DM to not necessarily reveal the scenario's significance. Your way is forcing you into a corner, my way has more options.



But I don't see anything inherently wrong with saying something like "Make a DC 15 spot check and I'll give you a little something extra." Making fake rolls for ~paranoia~ is just dumb and obnoxious though.

Making fake rolls allows you to maintain the tension and control when the scenario and tension is actually relevant. Basically in your system players know when a situation is high stakes, they have no sense of paranoia, there can be no surprises later because they know when they've failed at something. Hell, a lot of times I make the spot checks, so the players won't even know if they missed something because they rolled low.


Not in D&D, but in D&D you are supposed to shut up and take it. If you don't want random twists of fate to be painful, I think the better solution is to play a system that doesn't have such harsh twists of fate.

In D&D there is Rule Zero, and explicit permissions for the DM to alter the rules as necessary. Which to my mind allows for you to control when things like that are going to be an issue. A 1 in 6.25 x 10^6 chance (the odds of rolling four twenties in a row) shouldn't stop the game, unless it is appropriate for it to do so. I've seen three twenties in a row before, I've had sessions where the enemies rolled over 15 the entire session. D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder both require extensive work to create characters, so it's not like OD&D where rolling up a new character was practically instant.

LankyOgre
2019-01-03, 09:32 PM
Morgaln & AMFV
I don’t think I disagree with either of you that much. As a player, fudging rolls wouldn’t make me walk away from the table, and I can’t say I never fudged a roll as a GM.
But when I hear somebody vociferously defending fudging as an intrinsic part of their DM style, that is a clue that we may have different expectations.