Players skip everything - Has this ever happened to you?

[Jon_Dahl]

Well, today something extremely rare happened in our D&D campaign... The players solved all the encounters by using skill and guile, and all this was exceptionally fast. They successfully negotiated with the bad guys and they solved the puzzles super fast. The session was half way through and I got nothing more prepared for the session. The bad guys had lost almost zero hp and everything was done. I didn't like that feeling.

Furthermore, I must say that in hindsight, the advice that I got on this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?601821-Testing-a-riddle-for-my-game-please-try-to-answer) was pretty bad, because based on the advice I made the math problem too easy for my players. They spent less than 10 seconds thinking about it and got it right. To be honest, I was very disappointed. I guess some of you only accept extremely easy riddles and puzzles. Too bad that I fell for it.

[False God]

Well, today something extremely rare happened in our D&D campaign... The players solved all the encounters by using skill and guile, and all this was exceptionally fast. They successfully negotiated with the bad guys and they solved the puzzles super fast. The session was half way through and I got nothing more prepared for the session. The bad guys had lost almost zero hp and everything was done. I didn't like that feeling.
It happens. Sometimes players are on-task and focused. They get things done. Just tell your players "well, that's all I had planned today, I thought you'd take more time getting it done." No harm no foul. Not saying it is a great feeling, just saying it happens, get used to it.

Sometimes players will be absent-minded and unfocused and take the whole session to do nothing.


Furthermore, I must say that in hindsight, the advice that I got on this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?601821-Testing-a-riddle-for-my-game-please-try-to-answer) was pretty bad, because based on the advice I made the math problem too easy for my players. They spent less than 10 seconds thinking about it and got it right. To be honest, I was very disappointed. I guess some of you only accept extremely easy riddles and puzzles. Too bad that I fell for it.
Nice passive-aggressive 'tude there dude. That aside, several people advised you your problem was too simple.

[JeromeKCog]

It happens. Sometimes players are on-task and focused. They get things done. Just tell your players "well, that's all I had planned today, I thought you'd take more time getting it done." No harm no foul. Not saying it is a great feeling, just saying it happens, get used to it.

Sometimes players will be absent-minded and unfocused and take the whole session to do nothing.


This. There's no way of knowing exactly how much of your content players will get through in a single session. You can call it over once they've breezed through everything, allow some downtime for characters to do minor things, or just improv something to keep the session going.

Sometimes your players will do everything as efficiently as possible, other times they will spend an entire session buying tarpaulins.

[GrayDeath]

So, your players did well, and steamed through ONE session.

And you have nothing better to do than accuse people who were trying to help you? :confused:

Aside from you being grumpy for no oservable reason (uness of course the players didnt like it went easy, your opionion on fun is only one of the group, remember?) does not make that a bad thing, ya know?

[Kurald Galain]

Seriously, you're blaming the puzzle advice? Yeah, the players solved everything through skill and guile, I'm sure they would have enjoyed spending another two hours on a single puzzle. :smallamused:

[Eldonauran]

My players often find ways to bypass many encounters and have an uncanny ability to "skip ahead" in the story arc. I don't mind it so much anymore. They end up making the later encounters that much harder. My goal is to use up their resources. I am very good at that. As long as they are having fun, the game is going well.

[Demidos]

I have a couple questions --

1) Have you thought of WHY you are upset? As a DM, it can be easy to feel frustrated when the players once in a while crush everything, because you feel like it's poorly balanced and your players felt bored (at least in my case). But...did they have a good time? I find that players usually LOVE winning, and having that once in a blue moon where every plan actually goes right and doesn't have a wrench thrown in it....just feels good as a player. Maybe it's a good thing?

2) It's hard to judge how easy or hard a riddle might be for someone else, especially people you don't know. Are your players math and physics PhD students? Baristas? Programmers? Parents? Kids? I've played at tables with all of these categories of people, and a puzzle that fits one won't fit all. Beyond that, sometimes there's a simple puzzle that you just...don't get. I went to an escape room once and got stuck on the final puzzle, which was a basic math puzzle. We spent 20+ minutes (1/3 of the entire game) on that one puzzle, in a group with ivy-league programmers and scientists, and threw every sort of mathematical calculation at it that we could think of. The solution, when we ultimately failed? Just count the number of sides on the shapes. Obvious in hindsight? Of course, but it wasn't fun being stuck on something so stupid.

In short, the playground not knowing your players and in the interest of them not being frustrated with a puzzle you yourself said was to allow anyone except numbnuts through to meditate (paraphrased a bit).....isn't it reasonable that they may have erred on the side of making it actually solvable?

[AvatarVecna]

The first session of a game I'm currently running had three of the players wandering around town doing "day in the life" as they gradually discovered incoming plot. Perfectly normal.

One player saw the first plot hook, ran past five RP opportunities to talk with the questgiver, and then ran out of town past three completely different RP opportunities. The rest of the party was barely 5 minutes into saying hello to the local shopkeep and this player was already out the gates and going on an adventure.

They died to the first encounter, and their second character started in jail so they couldn't leave until the other players let them out of jail.

[vasilidor]

no, not really. I mean sometimes they trivialize encounters through creative use of abilities, but that's ok to me, as long as people had fun. because having fun is my end goal.

[King of Nowhere]

Well, today something extremely rare happened in our D&D campaign... The players solved all the encounters by using skill and guile, and all this was exceptionally fast. They successfully negotiated with the bad guys and they solved the puzzles super fast. The session was half way through and I got nothing more prepared for the session. The bad guys had lost almost zero hp and everything was done. I didn't like that feeling.



And that is bad how??

Your players CARE.
They care for the game. They stay focused on it.
They care for stuff. They put actual effort into solving a riddle instead of bypassing it.
They care for the world and the plot enough that they'd want to talk with the villain rather than attacking on sight. Well, unless the whole encounter went "you face the villain" "ok, i try diplomacy. 41" ".... The villain is now your best friend", in which case it sucked.
But if they cared enough about the world to understand the npc notivations and try to reason... When it happens to me, i take that to mean that i worked well.

And just be honest with them about expecting them to take longer. Makes them feel good for being good players, makes you feel good for having good players.

Would you rather have your players sit on their thumbs 2 hours to solve a riddle and murderhobo their way through anything else?

[Pugwampy]

Sorry bro . Dm,s dont always have as much fun as players .

Is this a new group ? If not you should know exactly how hard the puzzles should be . The only way to test players limits is to toss something out there and see how fast or slow its resolved and make it a bit harder next time if too easily solved . The fact is to make games interesting , you should always swop between very difficult and very easy encounters or puzzles .

Bad guys only negotiate with players if you allowed it . Your bad guys could have attacked anytime .

As for not preparing anything ....Sorry DM you can easily toss a bunch of random monsters at them to kill time or even reuse the bad guys info sheet who never got a chance to fight to the death . Anyone can download monster stats from google and make up a 5 minute silly story and location assuming they have no books close by .

Part of your boring job is to think up wierd stuff on the spot and adapt to your players and the game . You cannot prepare or see for everything .

[Quertus]

Good job not making the puzzle too hard. The only thing that would have made the session worse than a GM who isn't clever enough to plan more content ahead of time would have been having all their efforts to breeze through the content stymied by a killer puzzle that they never solved. Unless, of course, a) the puzzle was not on the critical path; b) the players knew that the puzzle was not on/blocking the critical path ("Rule of Three"); c) the players don't have a (real, perceived, or psychological) need to complete optional content; and d) the players love tough puzzles.

Have I had players skip everything? Absolutely! The most recent example, I had an NPC accidently open at portal to a strange realm (because of interference from that realm). The party saw these strange beings, noticed everything looked weird (like "out of focus", maybe), and attempted to communicate. The beings says something in an unknown language, and waited. Then, the beings clearly "rolled initiative". One of the monsters launched something at an NPC, who was apparently unharmed. The first PC to go? "… I offer them some candy¹?"

…

I stare at my notes.

I set down my notes.

"Well, encounter solved. They stand down, and come up for candy. As they eat the candy, they grow more attuned to your realm, and more recognizable. You realize that they are all Halloween "monsters". What they had said was, "trick or treat!".

The PCs were actually hyper-interested in befriending these NPCs, and brought candy by the truckload.

I then proceeded on to the content I had intended to use in the next session.

¹Which, given that this PC was always talking about being hungry, and other PCs were usually finding then something to eat, was an entirely plausible if uncharacteristic response.

[DeTess]

The greatest DnD session I have ver played in was all about avoiding the DM's encounters We got our noses bloodied on the first encounter, and decided a more prudent approach was in order. So we built a house, then dug a mile-long tunnel to the dungeon-tower. Then, when our cleric informed us that the dungeon was full of undead, we closed our tunnel, undermined the entire complex, and watched from the patio of our newly build house as the tower tumbled down.

I've never had the players bypass everything unexpectedly, yet. Usually when there's an option for bypassing stuff en masse I'll plan for that eventuality and have content ready to go.

[Skrum]

I thought this was going to be about players ignoring/not recognizing plot hooks. That's far more annoying, IMO.

Your story is exactly why I don't use puzzles. They virtually never work properly. What seems obvious to you as the creator of the puzzle may be inscrutable to anyone else. Alternatively, the puzzle is laughably easy and becomes a trivial encounter. I know that puzzles and riddles are a reoccurring thing in many fantasy stories, but they are far more trouble than they're worth in a DnD campaign.

[Psychoalpha]

You know what was absolutely missing from your posts in the thread you linked to?

The idea that solving your 'puzzle' should take any amount of time at all.

Nowhere, ever, did you indicate you wanted it to eat up any gameplay time. Nowhere, ever, did you indicate that you wanted this to be something the PCs would spend time trying to work out.

What you did indicate was that it COULD be solved by an Intelligence check, or anybody whose char had an Intelligence of 10 or higher just trying to figure it out, which by definition means that it couldn't be TOO difficult or someone with Int 10 wouldn't even have a chance.

So there was always going to be a better than even chance that some player with an Int 10+ character was going to just come up with the answer, or that one with an Int 20 character (or whatever) was going to roll high enough to get it, which takes exactly the time required to make the declaration and roll the d20.

In fact, the only circumstance where this puzzle would eat up any actual game time is one where nobody's playing characters smart enough to reliably make an Intelligence roll (and setting basic attribute rolls to high values is such a huge jerk move, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that the DC would have been in line with an Int 10 person with a +0 modifier actually having a reasonable chance of making the roll), and no player with an Int modifier is any good at math puzzles.

So blaming anybody in that other thread for misleading you, when the thing you're salty about happening wasn't even a consideration in that thread to begin with, is some high value nonsense. If you had said you wanted it to eat up some play time at the table, I imagine you'd have gotten a much different response. Like, say, providing the very helpful advice that you should never under any circumstances plan for a math problem to eat up substantial play time at the table unless you want your players to mutiny and burn you in effigy as a warning to all future DMs.

[Tallyn]

You know what was absolutely missing from your posts in the thread you linked to?

The idea that solving your 'puzzle' should take any amount of time at all.

Nowhere, ever, did you indicate you wanted it to eat up any gameplay time. Nowhere, ever, did you indicate that you wanted this to be something the PCs would spend time trying to work out.

What you did indicate was that it COULD be solved by an Intelligence check, or anybody whose char had an Intelligence of 10 or higher just trying to figure it out, which by definition means that it couldn't be TOO difficult or someone with Int 10 wouldn't even have a chance.


I have to agree with Psychoalpha here.. if you wanted a puzzle to eat up a certain amount of time, then you should have stated that in your original post.

Maybe lead up with the numerical part of the puzzle, but then to actuate the answer/solution, they have to interact with environmental elements that may not be super obvious. A picture or very detailed description of the room would help... maybe there are 16 objects they need to manipulate in some manner that are scattered about the room, the objects in question would have some identifying element in common, but it need not be obvious.

Just my two cents, but as someone said in the thread above, your passive aggressive attitude doesn't help things, and may limit any desire by some people to offer you advice in the future. Good luck in your future adventures

[Tvtyrant]

There is no good way to predict puzzle difficulty. People respond to patterns completely differently, that is why escape rooms use a ton of different types of puzzles thrown together.

For instance I am great at puzzle pieces and word searches but terrible at math. Some friends of mine are amazing at math problems and can't do visual puzzles to save their lives, etc. If you can't predict how long or hard a puzzle is for your players, how do you expect an Internet forum that hasn't met them to?

The best way to do it IMO is to make a couple types of puzzles, roll int checks and the players can remove a puzzle for each successful check. What is left are the ones that group have to do manually, this keeps them from getting locked out and lets them do them in and out of game. If they get all successes great, you just move on.

I also don't think you should worry about game length. I have had players finish a session in an hour for a three hour session, and just told them that I expected that (a boss fight) to take longer and we are going to play a board game/card game for the rest. I had to go take a 10 minute break to cool off, but that is the nature of playing with other people, it isn't predictable.

[Rynjin]

Sometimes it happens, man.

My best advice is to say "Good job, you guys did this way faster/better than I expected. That's all I've got planned for this session."

Then go play video games or something. That's what happens some weeks with my groups. They blew through an obstacle course/gauntlet thing I had planned in about 3 hours so we all moved on to play Heroes of the Storm instead. Sometimes we'll play a board game; Code Masters is popular with our group, as is Pictionary.

Your goal should be to have a FUN session, not a LONG session. Sometimes these are one and the same, but do not necessarily need to be.

[AlanBruce]

I thought this was going to be about players ignoring/not recognizing plot hooks. That's far more annoying, IMO.

Your story is exactly why I don't use puzzles. They virtually never work properly. What seems obvious to you as the creator of the puzzle may be inscrutable to anyone else. Alternatively, the puzzle is laughably easy and becomes a trivial encounter. I know that puzzles and riddles are a reoccurring thing in many fantasy stories, but they are far more trouble than they're worth in a DnD campaign.

My experience with plot hooks isn’t that players ignore them:

It’s that they make some if their own and attempt to go on the sidelines, attempting to drag the rest of the party with them.

As a brief example, a rogue in the party met the duke of a small duchy where the campaign began. The duke wasn’t really relevant to the story- he was a figurehead and nothing more.

But a rogue’s gotta rogue and so, during the arc taking place elsewhere in the duchy, this PC made it clear repeated times how he wanted to “rob the duke blind” and attempted infiltration several times to his estate, much to the chagrin of the rest of the party, who were not interested in dealing with this rogue’s plans and leaving them one PC short, since he was elsewhere during crucial moments of the campaign.

As for puzzles, use them within the context of the story, not just because you want to insert something to “test their problem solving skills beyond combat.”

Don’t get me wrong: puzzles can be fun, but know where and how to implement them. And don’t rely on math- not saying it’s bad- but you there are far more entertaining and visually fun puzzles for players to solve than an equation.

[Mordaedil]

Congratulations on having relatively smart players OP. But I think if you present them a straight cipher puzzle and get upset that they solved it instantly, you might have messed up on what makes a decent puzzle in D&D: Decrepit ruins. This means that something vital to the cipher is missing. Maybe shattered on the floor or faded from passage of time.

This is where you can ask for skill checks to have them fill in the ciphers from their characters experience, while you then make them figure out the cipher. This will serve to both make them be more creative and maybe a little less prepared for suddenly needing to resolve a cipher, demanding more from them.

And if you are particularly inventive, you can reuse said cipher later too, to give the players an alternative way to get an "ah-hah!" moment as the are dealing with a difficult encounter that can resolved by firing at the statue representing the answer from he previous cipher, while you offer the other ciphers as clues, so it isn't entirely lost on the players.

HTH.

[Jon_Dahl]

Thank you, everyone, for sharing your experiences.

To some posters:
I am always grateful when I receive advice, but I can tell people straight up that I wasn't happy with their advice in hindsight, even if I'm wrong in the way that I have assessed said advice. That's the way it is. I will not comment on that any further.

[King of Nowhere]

And don’t rely on math- not saying it’s bad- but you there are far more entertaining and visually fun puzzles for players to solve than an equation.

BLASPHEMY! BURN THE HERETIC!

of course, my table includes a physicist, 2 engineers, a chemist and an economist, so we may have a skewed perspective there we understand how the rest of the world may have not reach enlightenment yet .:smalltongue:

[GrayDeath]

BLASPHEMY! BURN THE HERETIC!

of course, my table includes a physicist, 2 engineers, a chemist and an economist, so we may have a skewed perspective there we understand how the rest of the world may have not reach enlightenment yet .:smalltongue:

That sounds a lot like the last "long time" Campaign i played at. 3 Physics Students, an English/Math teacher, and an aspiring engineer.

Just dont ask any of the table back then to spot "societal clues" ^^

[HouseRules]

That's why there is a guideline for the dungeon master to nerf players.
Determine if the player's INT or WIS is too low to make a decision is part of the DM's job.
A DM could always make a boundary and say so and so is too smart for INT X or WIS X.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

This is called "not a problem." Play a board game if you have nothing else prepared. I'm sure your players feel fine getting a clean win every once in a while. Now, if it happens regularly, the overall difficulty is just too low. Sometimes you can design a scenario where skill and guile are less useful. Sometimes you can design a scenario where skill and guile are required for them to even stand a chance.


That's why there is a guideline for the dungeon master to nerf players.
Determine if the player's INT or WIS is too low to make a decision is part of the DM's job.
A DM could always make a boundary and say so and so is too smart for INT X or WIS X.So the players cleverly overcame a challenge without being a murderhobo, and you want to violate the golden box and say the characters did not make that choice because their INT or WIS was too low? I strongly disagree.

[GrayDeath]

That's why there is a guideline for the dungeon master to nerf players.
Determine if the player's INT or WIS is too low to make a decision is part of the DM's job.
A DM could always make a boundary and say so and so is too smart for INT X or WIS X.

Nerfing your PLAYERS Int/Wis?

You jest, cetainly, or you would be asking us to commit lobotomies against their will on actual human beings! ^^

Jokes aside, making it purely character dependant IS a viable option, but if you do, one has to be ready for any and all riddles/etc to be just a Knowledge/Int/WIs Roll and nothing more.

[Melcar]

Well, today something extremely rare happened in our D&D campaign... The players solved all the encounters by using skill and guile, and all this was exceptionally fast. They successfully negotiated with the bad guys and they solved the puzzles super fast. The session was half way through and I got nothing more prepared for the session. The bad guys had lost almost zero hp and everything was done. I didn't like that feeling.

Furthermore, I must say that in hindsight, the advice that I got on this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?601821-Testing-a-riddle-for-my-game-please-try-to-answer) was pretty bad, because based on the advice I made the math problem too easy for my players. They spent less than 10 seconds thinking about it and got it right. To be honest, I was very disappointed. I guess some of you only accept extremely easy riddles and puzzles. Too bad that I fell for it.

Poor form blaming others for an interaction you had with your players. I haven't read the thread, nor did I play in your game, so that's all I'm going to say about that.


However, I have had everything and in between happen when DM'ing. I have had players circumvent everything I planned and basically within 5 min teleported into the BBEG's lair, killing him with ease and returning to town unscathed in a matter of minutes...

I have also had my players overthink tying their own shoes and doing "investigation" literally talking - as in role-playing - to every damn NPC I they met on their way, which meant we didn't even leave the tavern!

I have set up escape dungeons with guards patrolling in patterns, such a way as to facilitate complete sneaking out of there, where the party unbeknownst to the level of guards (I mean they only succeeded in capturing them without a fight) just charged the first and the best... essentially "ruining" hours of planning...

The beauty of D&D is that everything can happen. There is no set script or programming! Its just playing to see what happens. That what I enjoy most in DM'ing... getting surprised by my players! Lighten up... always plan for a backup plan or just tell your players that they literally beat your planned challenges in a quarter of the time and talk downtime and have fun the rest of the evening!

[Gnaritas]

I didn't follow the 'puzzle' thread much, but if i recall, you made several adjustments to the puzzle over time, because the puzzle was either unsolvable (wrong) or had multiple right answers. You should be happy people kept helping you fix those mistakes.

Besides that, it's a boring puzzle, if i would present this puzzle to my players they would not enjoy themselves. Either it's easy (and mostly a sequence puzzle is easy) or it's so far fetched that it would just be annoying.

An interesting puzzle takes way more time than just writing a sequence for them to finish. Don't blame other people for your lack of real effort.

You deserve this post.

<edit> after reading the thread, your statement isn't even true, several people warned you the puzzle was too easy. Most of the other posts were about fixing the mistakes you made.

[Alexvrahr]

I've had players skip everything I had prepared. At that point I bull**** mightily. It's a trainable skill, and years of games and reading fiction have trained it. You also need the self-confidence to do so of course.

[martixy]

Your whining has been addressed by everyone else already, but...

Dude, give me your bloody players! I want them to steam-roll my sessions! My own campaign has been progressing at a glacial pace and I really want us to get going to the juicy bits of the narrative!

[Yahzi Coyote]

I did it to a GM once. He spent weeks planning out the Hall of Deathtraps that our nemesis was hiding in. When it came time for the session, we defeated the high-level cleric and his minions in 20 minutes... without touching the dice. We literally talked the BBEG into joining our side (with a little help from the Tomb of Horrors doorway that changed alignment). That actually killed the entire campaign, unfortunately.

As for my players, I had a session where they literally walked past every monster they saw because they were too dangerous. But I run a Sandbox world and all of my monsters and kingdoms are auto-generated by a computer program (Sandbox World Generator - you can download it for free from DriveThruRPG), so I never run out of adventure ideas. They can pick a direction at random and walk that way and the program tells me what's there.

I would never, ever put a puzzle in my games. That's just an INT check. The real puzzle is how do they use the resources they have to defeat the problem in front of them? Usually they take longer than I would expect to solve the easy problems, and less time than I hoped to solve the hard ones. But as someone else said, the randomness is the point of the game - other wise we'd just be writing novels.

[Quertus]

I would never, ever put a puzzle in my games. That's just an INT check. The real puzzle is how do they use the resources they have to defeat the problem in front of them? Usually they take longer than I would expect to solve the easy problems, and less time than I hoped to solve the hard ones. But as someone else said, the randomness is the point of the game - other wise we'd just be writing novels.

Modern teaching best practices says to mix up your delivery method. Not just because different people learn better from different methods, but because our ADD modern societies find samey instruction too boring to pay attention to.

Similarly, I find (brief) puzzles, riddles, etc, to be a welcome "change of pace" from tactical elf games. Similar to the value of "talky bits" or "plot". :smallwink:

Removing all of these takes us back to war games, which, while I enjoy them, I find them inferior to RPGs.

[martixy]

I would never, ever put a puzzle in my games. That's just an INT check. The real puzzle is how do they use the resources they have to defeat the problem in front of them? Usually they take longer than I would expect to solve the easy problems, and less time than I hoped to solve the hard ones. But as someone else said, the randomness is the point of the game - other wise we'd just be writing novels.

Oh, I love puzzles.

However the puzzles I find interesting tend to be very rare. Therefore not many end up in my game.

The one puzzle I'm currently most excited about springing to the party is a 4-dimensional maze. I just wonder if I should keep it to 3x3x3x3 or I can go larger.

[False God]

I would never, ever put a puzzle in my games. That's just an INT check. The real puzzle is how do they use the resources they have to defeat the problem in front of them? Usually they take longer than I would expect to solve the easy problems, and less time than I hoped to solve the hard ones. But as someone else said, the randomness is the point of the game - other wise we'd just be writing novels.

Ultimately this identifies my issue with puzzles. Puzzles are ultimately a player challenge, not a character challenge. The character challenge boils down to a die roll. So lets skip the puzzle and get to the die roll rather than sitting around until the real people at the table figure out the puzzle.

Now that's not to say some real people don't enjoy puzzles. And I do try to include some simple puzzles for them, and often I bring physical brain teasers as the puzzles themselves. But the players aren't the ones who are supposed to be solving the puzzle. How do I balance the fact that Jimmy who IRL sucks at puzzles is playing WizardMan who has 22 int? Oh yeah it's a die roll. *sigh*

I've generally compromised by including a puzzle, going round robin through my players giving each a chance to solve it without a die roll, and if noone can, then we move over to die rolls.

The same issue exists for talking checks. Some players are good talkers. Some characters have high CHA. These are not always the same.

[tstewt1921]

That's why the spell "Find the Path" is banned at our table.