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Talakeal
2020-09-30, 10:16 PM
I just had a conversation with my brother about starting a family RPG group since my regular group is on definite hiatus due to quarantine. His response was that he doesn't want to game with me again because of an incident that happened nearly 20 years ago.

Essentially, it was his first time DMing, and his adventure hook involved an NPC with a hypnotic gaze mind controlling the players into going on a quest for him, and I had my character blind herself rather than be subject to his mind control, essentially ruining both his plot and my character, and thus the campaign came to quick end.

But, thinking back, its not an isolated incident. I have had numerous games where the DM railroaded the PCs into being captured as an adventure hook, and I took extreme measures to resist or escape and derailed / got kicked out of the campaign.

On the opposite side of the screen, anytime I have ever tried to run a "jailbreak" type scenario, the players protest most strongly and will rather go down in a blaze or glory and suffer a TPK rather than surrender or allow themselves to be taken prisoner, and I have long since given up even trying.

Likewise, I remember a common complaint on the old White Wolf forums being about the "Iron Will" merit (which makes you more or less immune to mind control) because without the ability to mind control the PCs, how could the Game Master ever ensure that they would go along with the plot?

Likewise, I have seen some people complaining that the Descent into Avernus module starts with the PCs being drafted by the Flaming Fist under the threat of death, and I can't imagine that actually going over well with anybody.

So, my question is, why do so many DMs, especially new DMs, need to strong arm players into going along with their adventures?

Likewise, why are players so utterly afraid of allowing themselves to be captured and taken prisoner?

Is there any right way to run a jailbreak / slave revolt scenario?

Hellpyre
2020-10-01, 12:22 AM
Is there any right way to run a jailbreak / slave revolt scenario?

The right way is to have player buy-in before you start. It's much easier if you have a larger pool of potential players to pull from, but essentially you want to say "I would like to run a campaign about [THING], are any of you interested in playing that?" And then running a nice, deep session 0 to hash out events that need player co-operation.

Essentially the biggest problem comes when the DM makes decisions on behalf of the players. That's the usual root cause of player resentment in these scenarios. When the players agree to the decision ahead of it playing out, you tend to generate much less friction as a result.

Jorren
2020-10-01, 12:29 AM
I just had a conversation with my brother about starting a family RPG group since my regular group is on definite hiatus due to quarantine. His response was that he doesn't want to game with me again because of an incident that happened nearly 20 years ago.

Essentially, it was his first time DMing, and his adventure hook involved an NPC with a hypnotic gaze mind controlling the players into going on a quest for him, and I had my character blind herself rather than be subject to his mind control, essentially ruining both his plot and my character, and thus the campaign came to quick end.

Your solution sounds like a more interesting end to the story than what he had planned.


So, my question is, why do so many DMs, especially new DMs, need to strong arm players into going along with their adventures?

Because they are new and inexperienced they think that the cool story that they came up in their own heads is what will translate to a good game. The first lesson is that however cool your story seems in your own head, it is highly likely that your players will not perceive it the same.


Likewise, why are players so utterly afraid of allowing themselves to be captured and taken prisoner?

Because they have seen the exact same thing in movies, books, etc. and it's never going to seem as interesting, fresh, etc. In many stories the capture/prisoner scenario is lame and contrived. Even when it is not, it is still not going to be as interesting in an RPG concept. People often play rpgs because they get to do things, not see things happen. Having control for many players is a crucial motivation to play games. Although RPGs are not a competitive endeavor, players often feel getting captured is akin to 'losing' even more so than getting killed.


Is there any right way to run a jailbreak / slave revolt scenario?

Uh, run by your players in advance and see if the idea is compelling to them? Personally, if I had to play something like this, I would prefer that the DM just start the scenario with the PCs in captivity and go from there. Having to play it out would seem boring and a waste of time to me.

Telok
2020-10-01, 12:58 AM
The prisoner/jailbreak scenarios that I've run successfully all had two elements in common: First, it was the PC's actions that got them into jail. Second, the game system had either plot immune gear OR extremely replacable gear.

On the first point, I have never seen any prison/jail scenario work worth a damn when it was NPCs driving the action. I've run them (only twice, I try to learn from mistakes), and I've played through them (six or ten times), and of course I've let others rant about them. They never worked when NPCs were in control. What has worked, three times, is the actions of the PCs putting themselves in a beliveable and justifiable "rock and a hard place" situation that ends in surrender. Failed space piracy from taking too long, not turning off a dropped cellphone, and not being in control of the docking/elevator mechanisim, was the most recent. The PCs knowingly started on a risky path, made multiple mistakes, and got into a spot where they couldn't run and fighting wouldn't go well.

The second point is based on the system. I've had prison/jailbreak action work in point buy supers type games, early AD&D, and Paranoia. In point buy games your gear that's bought with character resources has a certain level of plot immunity. Iron Man may have to go without the armor for a bit, or Batman may not have the gadgets for a scene or two, but they're getting the stuff back in time to join the big fight. Because if they don't have their stuff, they can't play. Now early D&D and Paranoia have, effectively, temporary and replacable gear. Both games are more about player skill and fun than the character sheet. Old D&D had golf bags of magic swords at high levels in part because there were things that would break them and it was expected that every character would face things that ignored or were immune to their class abilities. In Paranoia you had clones that were just flat out given their gear again. Up to, and including, the experimental weapon from R&D that blew up your previous clone when you (mis)used it.

Modern D&D/clones/spin-offs, and especially modules from publishers, just don't do either of those. Fighters turn into crap without weapons or armor, casters require components/foci/holy symbols for all the decent spells, stuff like that. The gear numbers are baked into the system but there isn't any assurance that your gear comes back. Without the gear numbers the characters mostly can't fight, and if the non-fighty part of the system is too "only exactly what the ability says" or too lol-random (or <shudder> both) to plan anything you're locked into asking the DM for a cut-scene escape. Then too, module writers tend to be really bad at presenting options because they have page limits. So you're not getting options for when the PCs get ambushed and win or run away, the capture is predetermined and sort of the ultimate lousy railroad scenario. Then too the writers need to explain and give the DM the tools to work through the scenario. That goes beyond a bad map, stat blocks, a locked chest with their stuff, and "if they aren't out by day X blow the place up and they fiat escapt during that". DMs, especially new DMs or just DMs new to a setting/system, need advice on what the PCs would know that the players don't, options, allies, possible rescue, prisoner transport, etc., etc. But all that takes word count that the module writers just don't seem to be allowed.

Last thought. I've seen it work in one other system. Pendragon. Because everyone was legit, honorable, Arthurian-style knights and things like ransoms, keeping your word, and non-murderous rivals were built into the system and rewarded.

Satinavian
2020-10-01, 01:13 AM
Likewise, why are players so utterly afraid of allowing themselves to be captured and taken prisoner?Because prisoners are completely at the mercy of unfriendly PCs for the forseeable future. And usually deprived of all/most of their options so they can't escape easily. Does that seem like fun ? Or something characters would like to do ? In fact, resisting in the captering scene, when the PCs still have all their weapons and powers ususlly seems like the most likely option to get/retain your freedom. Afterwards it is just passibly waiting until the DM hands you the escape opportunity and the characters can't know that such a thing might come their way.


I have seen a couple of such scenarios work well. Most of them had the PCs captured organically and off the rails. They were already beaten and in a hopeless situation. Also in at least half the cases, not the complete party was captured. Because sometimes some PCs are in a better position to escape than others and that is what happends when you run captures without obnoxious railroading.

But prison breaks ? Hardly ever have seen that. If the NPCs are not utter idiots, the PCs hardly ever get a chance to escape. Rescue can work but a prison break needs good reasons why it can happen and thus usually does not happen organically unless the NPCs have very wrong ideas about the PCs powers (and the PCs did not show off when captured). There were also lots of cases that ended in "let the PCs go" or "ransom the PCs".

Batcathat
2020-10-01, 01:23 AM
Is there any right way to run a jailbreak / slave revolt scenario?

I think the same applies to that as to any other scenario. The GM can try to push the party a certain way (whether it's by people trying to capture them, offering them a huge reward or something else) but shouldn't railroad it if the party doesn't react as expected.

kalkyrie
2020-10-01, 04:00 AM
One good way to run a jail break I've seen is to get the *characters* to agree to it.

They've been tasked with rescuing a political prisoner from your campaigns version of Alcatraz.
However they don't know where the prisoner is inside the prison and there is a ring of lethal defenses pointing 'outward' to stop rescue attempts.

Combine that with a hostile army of reinforcements an hour or so out from the prison, and they simply don't have enough of a time window to go in spells blazing and search the entire prison.

The contact hiring them suggests the idea of intentionally getting arrested and sent to the prison under cover identities.
This gives the characters the chance to store at home any items they don't want to risk, make up interesting cover stories to help them not stand out in the prison, and set up backup plans in case something goes wrong.
Obvious one here would be a second rescue party to try a jail break in 2 months time, precisely at midnight. If the characters know a jailbreak is coming, they can sabotage defenses and be ready to get themselves and the prisoner to the extraction point before the reinforcements arrive.

'Break the Chains' by Megan E. O'Keefe is interesting inspiration for this style of adventure.
A side benefit of this idea is that the characters will have card blanche to break the law, to get thrown in prison under cover identities.
What crime would your characters do if they effectively wouldn't suffer the consequences for it?

Glorthindel
2020-10-01, 05:17 AM
The only time I have run a capture scenario (and felt that it worked), I deliberately contrived situations to split the party up, ambushing them individually, and then took the player aside and said "look, you are going to get captured due to plot; we can play it out if you like, but its likely going to be frustrating and tedious, or we can just describe between us how it happened, and get it over with fast". None of my players wasted time dice rolling, and were happy to go along with the plot.

I did a similar thing when I ran a Doppleganger plot; the first sct required the party to get overwhelmed by Dopplegangers, so each time a character and a Doppleganger were alone together, I took them aside, told them they were killed and replaced with a Doppleganger, but not to worry, this isn't the end, and read them the flavour text of their release/ressurection, and then let them play on as the under-cover Doppleganger in their old form. Instead of being annoyed by the plot, my players had a whale of a time, and there was even an in-character arguement between two players-turned-Doppleganger who were competing with each other to claim the scalp of a confused still-human party member.

The secret is having the player on your side for the capture. It needs trust, but a party without trust between their players and DM is doomed anyway. The reason most players resist is they assume 'bad things' will happen to their character, and they are expected to resist, because if they don't, its game over. But if you assure them "its ok, nothing long-term bad is going to happen, and I am not going to use it to cheat you out of well-earned abilities or items, I just need it to reframe the start of the next part of the story", they will nearly always go along with it.

Berenger
2020-10-01, 05:48 AM
Captivity goes hand in hand with humiliation, helplessness, loss of autonomy and violation of self-efficacy. Some people are just not into that for a variety of reasons.

Even if they have no fundamental objection to explore such themes in the frame of an rpg, they might want to do that with one character but not the other. For example, my GM once ran ye olde "You are captured by slavers in a cutscene, overthrow those after some months of slavery, but there is no way to leave the otherwise deserted island. You'll have to accept being shanghaied into the crew of a passing pirate ship and go on pirate adventures with them." plot. Absolutely lovely, had he been upfront about this. Sadly, he didn't want to spoil that little surprise and so I brought a lawful good paladin that would have preferred death in battle to enslavement and being a hermit on a jungle island to partaking in murder, pillage and torture so I fought every development of the story tooth and nail. That campaign kind of crashed and burned. Im sure it would have worked with some info on the planned contents during character creation.

If given half a chance, I try to make a point of slaughtering every PC or NPC that uses any form of mind control against my characters. Jedi, wizard, vampire - it does not really matter. They need to die, preferably in a painful and humiliating fashion, forgiveness is off the table, and whatever plan they had shall be ruined on principle, and it does not matter in the slightest if it was "benevolent" or "for the greater good". Having my character mind-controlled is just that obnoxious to me. I'm a total hypocrite, though, and happily use those spells against NPC myself - when I play villainous characters. If presented with a whole adventure that revolved around being mind-controlled to do stuff, I'd hand the GM my character sheet and tell him to go play with himself or write a novel, since that's obviously what he actually wants to do.

MoiMagnus
2020-10-01, 06:20 AM
Is there any right way to run a jailbreak / slave revolt scenario?

Suggestion A:

1) Have a jailbreak scenario somewhat ready, in parallel of your main scenario.
2) If the PCs gets into a jail, ask for the end of the session / a break for you to adapt your jailbreak scenario to current situation.
3) If the PCs don't get into jail, continue with your main scenario.
PS: If you really like your jailbreak scenario and want to eventually run it, make sure to have enemies that have reasons to not kill the PCs, and that the players know it. Lawful enemies are great for that.
=> This suggestion is very practical to convert an unexpected TPK into an interesting opportunity.

Suggestion B:

If you're gonna railroad, try to attenuate as much as possible the frustration:
1) Try to find a moment where it feels "deserved". If your players are anywhere similar to my friends, the number of traps "obvious a posteriori" they fall into is high enough to always have such opportunities.
2) Peoples are much more complacent with railroading when it happens at the "beginning" rather than at the "middle" or "end" of a scenario.
3) I'd rather have a single sentence saying "You're overrun by enemies and captured" than a full fight where my choices don't matters. (Unless the quality of gameplay during the fight is so exceptional and would be worth a session by itself. But "how to correctly DM a fight doomed to failure" is another subject by itself).
4) Accept objections from the players. You might consider that railroading is worth the upcoming fun from your scenario. However, peoples have different fun, so accept that you might be wrong and that what you're offering in exchange is not worth their frustration.

Pelle
2020-10-01, 06:32 AM
Just run it as a one-shot or as the opening for a longer campaign. The game starts with the characters in jail already. And then you can ask cool leading questions about why and how they ended up there.

Talakeal
2020-10-01, 07:29 AM
A few thoughts to add on to my OP:

It seems like A LOT of modules start with the players as prisoners. So maybe I am overestimating PC antipathy for being captured (or the module authors are just underestimating it).


I actually like playing a prisoner personally. Bridge on the River Kwai is one of my favorite movies, and I love playing out similar contests of wills with my captors in RPGs and the RP opportunities it creates. But I guess that isn't for everyone.


Basically, I have seen a jailbreak scenario happening in one of two ways:

1: Artificially, in which case the PCs just begin the adventure in captivity, in which case the players will complain about railroading and loss of agency or
2: Organically, where they pick a fight they can't win (or just have really bad luck) and end up captured. But the thing is, there is no point prepping such a scenario, as the players will invariable refuse to surrender, fight to the death, and end the campaign.

So at this point I just don't even bother.





Because they have seen the exact same thing in movies, books, etc. and it's never going to seem as interesting, fresh, etc. In many stories the capture/prisoner scenario is lame and contrived. Even when it is not, it is still not going to be as interesting in an RPG concept.

Why does this apply to prison escapes more than any other genre though? Treasure hunts, monster slaying, foiling villains, and toppling dictators are all far more common plots, but seem to be widely accepted in RPGs.


Because prisoners are completely at the mercy of unfriendly PCs for the forseeable future. And usually deprived of all/most of their options so they can't escape easily. Does that seem like fun ? Or something characters would like to do ? In fact, resisting in the captering scene, when the PCs still have all their weapons and powers ususlly seems like the most likely option to get/retain your freedom.

That seems bizarre to me both in and out of character. Out of character, you know the DM is going to offer you the chance to escape, because otherwise the campaign would end. In character, fighting to the death when the enemy has you dead rights is just dumb, if you surrender you can always live to fight another day.

Yora
2020-10-01, 08:05 AM
So, my question is, why do so many DMs, especially new DMs, need to strong arm players into going along with their adventures?

Likewise, why are players so utterly afraid of allowing themselves to be captured and taken prisoner?

Because players generally expect to play a game where they are the heroes and the game is about them. Players are being told that RPGs are these special games in which they can do anything and their imagination is the only limit. That's generally how RPGs are pitched to people who never played them.

Players have to be forced to go along with the GM's adventures because that's not what they were promised and what they signed up for. They want their characters to act like they want, not like the GM wants.

The solution is to not run adventures that force the players to act in specific ways. Which is something almost no D&D adventure writer in the past 35-ish years understands.

Pelle
2020-10-01, 08:32 AM
It seems like A LOT of modules start with the players as prisoners. So maybe I am overestimating PC antipathy for being captured (or the module authors are just underestimating it).


If the players starts as prisoners, you don't have the issue of having to capture the PCs in game. It makes the module less suited for slotting into an ongoing campaign however.

hifidelity2
2020-10-01, 09:30 AM
Just run it as a one-shot or as the opening for a longer campaign. The game starts with the characters in jail already. And then you can ask cool leading questions about why and how they ended up there.

This is what I have done and the players knew this was going to be the kick off

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-01, 09:47 AM
I've only done one "prison" scenario, but it was for 3 concurrent groups. And that was as a campaign starter:

They were told before the game started "you're in prison. Could be for something you did or something you were accused of doing by this highly conformist society. Tell me what your character was imprisoned for." They were then offered death or life (metaphorically--the players were told that they could choose, but then they'd have to have new characters who chose life), but the life would be as "adventurers", ie disposable explorers and trouble-shooters on the frontier. From there on, they got shipped to their first location, but then were free to do whatever (no further chains). Total time in prison: ~half a session, all narrative/roleplay.

It went over...ok. Except that each group went out of their way to escape any "chains" that remained as soon as possible and the one that went the furthest made sure to incite reform of the system to abolish that "adventuring" system later.

Personally, I wouldn't mind a "starting in prison" as long as it wasn't a big part and we weren't left gear-less for a long time. Contrived "you've been captured in your sleep" or other things would feel like railroading. I also don't like mind control and don't use it myself, so...

Telok
2020-10-01, 10:22 AM
Something else I've thought of, other than Pendragon (a game where characters have built-in morals and codes of honor that are rewarded by the system) all the successful prison/jailbreaks that I've seen have been in more modern style games. Supers, sci-fi, stuff like that.

Perhaps it's because the players have a better understanding of how they can get out and there's an expectation of... something other than being chained to a wall in faux-medeval hole in the ground and constantly tortured. In a more modern setting the PCs can usually expect phone calls, lawyers, not being chained up all the time, no or minimal torture, and they probably have a better handle on who and how to do bribes.

Darth Credence
2020-10-01, 10:45 AM
I've had PCs captured and imprisoned several times, and no one has ever complained. One of the most recent ones, all of the players went away telling me how great the session was. I'm not entirely sure why my experience is different, but I have a few ideas.

First, I established pretty early on that when things are going badly for one side of combat, they try to get out of there. Monsters don't fight to the death - if they lose a bunch of hit points, or too many of their side die, they get out. It was kind of a surprise for the players the first time it happened, and they weren't prepared to stop it, but they eventually got to the point where they would be prepared to stop an escape if they needed the creatures dead, or accept that driving them off may be all that was necessary. I think milestone levelling helped, as no one was concerned that not killing meant not enough experience. With this firmly established, the players began to get the idea that sometimes, discretion is the better part of valor and it is Ok to not fight to the death every time.

I also always allowed them to capture people if they tried for it, and to get information from their captives. They became used to the idea that sometimes, fights end with one side surrendering, or being knocked out, and that this did not mean the end of the story.

From there, I let things play out. There was a city with a corrupt baron (this was the most recent version I've done, and the only one in 5e), who used prisoners as disposable mine workers, and had a whole bunch of unreasonable laws. When the PCs inevitably broke one of them (the laws were all spelled out in the town charter that they were given a copy of when they went through the gates, so they could have avoided it, but the laws were set up to make it incredibly difficult). When the guards attempted to arrest them, they probably could have won a fight with them, which would have led to them being branded outlaws, and I would have gone with a Robin Hood type story. Instead, the group surrendered, not wanting to kill a bunch of guards doing what they were ordered to do. So they went to the mine, met a bunch of prisoners who were already trying to break out through digging an escape tunnel, and joined in the escape attempt. The tunnel broke through into a cave system, and they had to work to get through it with picks and shovels - lots of uses of skills to try and avoid things, or use spells without material components, and so on. They made it out, and then snuck into the keep while sending one of the prisoners to the count for help. They found their gear, and ended up capturing the baron, and holding the keep. As some of the baron's knights began to attack, we played that for a bit, but the players were just holding on until help could arrive. The prisoner did reach the count, and the count sent some troops. With the PCs controlling the keep, and the count's troops closing in on them, the rest of the baron's forces stood down. The count himself stepped in, and threw the baron and most of his people into the mines to work. I went back and forth in my head as to whether they would get possession of the keep, and finally had a discussion with the players as to whether they wanted that type of campaign, and they decided they'd prefer to not be tied down there, and continued on their way.

Maybe I have unusual players, but at no point did they seem to object to the idea that they were captured, or think it took away from their agency. It's a brutal world, with petty tyrants that may try to arrest you for doing things they don't like. As to the OP, where you blinded yourself rather than go along with the plot, I can't argue with not wanting to game with you again. He was absolutely railroading - no question. I probably would have exited the campaign, saying that it wasn't for me. But I don't think it makes a lot of sense for a character to blind themselves - in most RPG worlds I've played in, that's really no different from slitting ones own throat, and I can't see anyone cut out for adventuring choosing that course of action immediately. It sounds like a big personal FU to the DM, and the DM choosing to not play with the person that did that seems like a reasonable response. I have never been kicked out of a campaign, nor have I ever kicked someone else out. If I had been kicked out of multiple campaigns because of a dramatic action I took, I'd probably look at myself and try to figure out why the common denominator in these things was me. It might be that I am not doing a good job of establishing whether we are a good fit or not in the beginning.

kyoryu
2020-10-01, 11:33 AM
Players come into games with certain expectations and ideas. Being captured removes their agency to do the things they expect to.

Likewise, GMs often (not always) go into games wanting to tell "their story", and so need to coerce players into that.

The solution is simple. Tell players what the game is about, and get their buy-in.

If you're not expecting Descent to Avernus, and get coerced by the Flaming Fist, of course you're gonna be mad because that's not what you wanted to do. You've had choice removed.

If you know you're playing Descent to Avernus, and get coerced, your thought process is just "oh, I guess this is the hook to get us going there. Cool." You already know you're heading in a specific direction that's planned, so why fight it?

If you have a particular premise for a game, get buy-in from the players on the player level rather than coercing them into it in-game. It's the easiest thing to do and yields the best results.

icefractal
2020-10-01, 03:24 PM
One of the big motivating factors for players, and probably the main one for GMs, is "look at me". Look at the ideas I've come up with. Look at how I've implemented them. Be impressed, or amused, or something, but pay attention to me.

When both the GM and the players have this desire, it can clash. Sometimes in a positive, collaborative way - the players riff off the GM and vice-versa, combining the ideas together and appreciating both of them. Sometimes in a negative way, fighting for the spotlight. Sometimes I have a hard time not reading "Those spoiled new-school players, too glued to what's on their character sheets and not paying enough attention to the situation" as "Don't look at that crap you made, look at this cool stuff I made!"

A capture scenario often pushing things way more into the GM's court. Many PCs abilities will be un-usable, demonstrating their personality may just get them punished, and when they do break out it's often by GM-provided opportunities that they have to engage with as the GM intends. It can feel like "Ok, you clowns are paying too much attention to yourselves and not enough to me, so now you don't have a choice."

It doesn't have to be like that - with the right characters, being imprisoned is a good way to demonstrate their personality and put them in the spotlight. Probably one reason these kind of scenarios work better as the start of a campaign with the players told up-front.

"Look at me" isn't the only player motive, of course. But the others don't necessarily lend themselves to accepting imprisonment either. Personally I like the "explorer" stance when it suits the game, which is all about focusing on the world the GM presents, but (to me at least) it's also much more enjoyable with an IC mindset. Which is relevant because IC I don't have any reason to expect that foes competent enough to capture us are going to later be sloppy enough that we can break out. So "not getting captured in the first place" is really the best odds by far (I'd bet a lot more people successfully run from the cops than manage to break out of prison, for example).

Jay R
2020-10-01, 04:48 PM
First of all, it's not generally true that players take extreme measures to resist or escape the plothook, or to derail the campaign. Most players are actually there to pick up the plothook and play out the campaign.

If Frodo won't take the Ring to Mordor, there's no story.
If Luke won't leave Tatooine to find the princess, there's no story.
If Harry refuses to go to Hogwarts, there's no story.
If D'Artagnan stays in Gascony, there's no story.
If Bruce Wayne refuses to train to avenge his parents, there's no story.
If Tony Stark doesn't build armor to escape with, there's no story.

But you can generally count on it that Frodo will take the Ring, Luke will leave Tatooine, Harry will go to Hogwarts, D'Artagnan will go to Paris, Bruce Wayne will become the Batman, and Tony Stark will build the Iron Man suit.

Because that's why those characters exist.

That's why my PCs exist, too -- to play the game that the DM is running.

But there are a couple of issues involved:

A. Players do not like encounters in which they are already going to lose, regardless of what they do. A scenario in which they are captured or imprisoned is an encounter in which the DM has already decided what will happen, regardless of their actions or the dice. For that reason, I tend to put the PCs in the position to start the campaign directly, instead of running a capture encounter to do it. DMs: Never use an encounter that could prevent your own scenario.

B. DMs feel that they have to strong-arm players into going on the adventures because there are players who take extreme measures to resist or escape the plothook, or to derail the campaign. Players: Never join a game and then try to resist, escape from, or derail the game.

D&D is a co-operative venture. The DM agrees to create a scenario for the players, and the players agree to play in it. There's no other way for it to work. If a player or players successfully resist playing in the DM's game, then no game happens.

The solution? Players need to have a DM that they trust to create a fun adventure, and then enter into the fun adventure. The DM needs players whom he or she can trust to play in the adventure, and then to focus on making it fun for the players.

You will never know if your brother's scenario twenty years ago would have been fun. He tried to create a game for you, and you stopped it. If you wanted to play D&D at that time, then your action prevented it.

If you didn't want to play that game of D&D, based on the knowledge you had at the time, then it would have been better to have simply said, "I don't want to play this scenario. I hope the rest of you have fun," and walked away from the game. There is nothing to be gained by (in your own words) "essentially ruining ... his plot".

I have no history of any player ruining my plot or his own character. If I did, then I'd probably be tempted to react like your brother. I work hard to make a fun game for my players only because they like it and try to play it.

I have certainly put PCs in difficult situations not of their choosing. In the last two games I ran, the players had to start as
1. servants of traveling Wanderers, each of whom had a powerful but uncontrollable artifact, or
2. Growing up in an isolated village, with no knowledge beyond the haunted forest that surrounded them.

It would have been easy for players to break my plot. In the first case, all they had to do was not pick up the artifacts when their masters died in the second session. In the second case, they could just refuse to go with the caravans headed through the forest to market.

In either case, the scenario I planned would have been over. But my players did not do that; they played the game.

In the last three games I played,
1. my ranger was required to escort a group of southern city-folk through the Blue Northern Forest.
2. my gnome illusionist had to join a group investigating a missing shipment of honeymead, and
3. my 2e thief/magic-user had to join a convoy off to explore and colonize a new continent.

I, or any other player, could simply have said, "No. My PC doesn't do that." And all the DM's preparations for the game would have been useless.

But we didn't. We actually played the games. And enjoyed them.

The solution to the problem of players resisting the campaign is not to resist the campaign. The DM can help with that, by not using an encounter that requires the PCs to lose. But whether the DM makes that mistake or not, if the players won't play the campaign, then the campaign won't happen.

Batcathat
2020-10-01, 04:59 PM
You will never know if your brother's scenario twenty years ago would have been fun. He tried to create a game for you, and you stopped it. If you wanted to play D&D at that time, then your action prevented it.

While I do agree that players need to work with the GMs plot just as the GM need to work with the players' characters, this interpretation is going too far, I think. Building an adventure that depend on railroading the PCs to get mind controlled and not being able to adapt to the reasonable reaction of trying to resist the mind control doesn't exactly scream "great GMing" to me.

Jay R
2020-10-01, 08:02 PM
While I do agree that players need to work with the GMs plot just as the GM need to work with the players' characters, this interpretation is going too far, I think. Building an adventure that depend on railroading the PCs to get mind controlled and not being able to adapt to the reasonable reaction of trying to resist the mind control doesn't exactly scream "great GMing" to me.

Your re-invention of what I said is certainly going too far. I made no comment about how good or bad the DMing was. I certainly never said it was “great DMing”.

I said that that one player’s action prevented the D&D game from happening. That’s not an “interpretation”; it’s a simple fact.

Talakeal
2020-10-01, 08:25 PM
If you're not expecting Descent to Avernus, and get coerced by the Flaming Fist, of course you're gonna be mad because that's not what you wanted to do. You've had choice removed.

If you know you're playing Descent to Avernus, and get coerced, your thought process is just "oh, I guess this is the hook to get us going there. Cool." You already know you're heading in a specific direction that's planned, so why fight it?


IMO, trying to railroad the PCs like that is significantly more likely to derail the adventure.

The thing is, a lot of people don't like being told what to do, either in or out of character.

If the flaming fist just asked me to go on the mission I would, probably free of reward, but by threatening me they are making themselves my enemies, and getting revenge will be more pressing than actually goin on the adventure.

Just like IRL I am likely to give money to a panhandler, but would probably stand my ground against a mugger (unless they were armed, in which case I would probably give them the money but immediately go to the police).

Its the old "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar" thing.


You will never know if your brother's scenario twenty years ago would have been fun. He tried to create a game for you, and you stopped it. If you wanted to play D&D at that time, then your action prevented it.

If you didn't want to play that game of D&D, based on the knowledge you had at the time, then it would have been better to have simply said, "I don't want to play this scenario. I hope the rest of you have fun," and walked away from the game. There is nothing to be gained by (in your own words) "essentially ruining ... his plot".

I have no history of any player ruining my plot or his own character. If I did, then I'd probably be tempted to react like your brother. I work hard to make a fun game for my players only because they like it and try to play it.

At that point, the fun for me is in trying to thwart my captors. I get much more into the RP portion of the game.

Now, as a person, the mature thing to do would have been to just put my desires aside, go along with the new DM and offer encouragement, and just enjoy the game as it was, but I wasn't mature, I was an emotionally troubled teenager.


Thinking more about it, I had another experience where we were playing WoD and I was playing a mortal whose only supernatural power was immunity to mental effects (think Bella from Twilight). The very first encounter was against an enemy who had super mind control powers that ignored mind control immunity, and I immediately left the game. I was told that I was being a "bad player" and that a good gamer would just go along with the DM regardless, but I don't know, to me guilting someone into playing in an adventure where their only power is immediately nullified just seems like a **** waving contest that won't be fun for anyone.


Because players generally expect to play a game where they are the heroes and the game is about them. Players are being told that RPGs are these special games in which they can do anything and their imagination is the only limit. That's generally how RPGs are pitched to people who never played them.

Players have to be forced to go along with the GM's adventures because that's not what they were promised and what they signed up for. They want their characters to act like they want, not like the GM wants.

The solution is to not run adventures that force the players to act in specific ways. Which is something almost no D&D adventure writer in the past 35-ish years understands.

Hi Yora!

I was just reading your blog and thinking about messaging you.

kyoryu
2020-10-01, 11:27 PM
IMO, trying to railroad the PCs like that is significantly more likely to derail the adventure.

The thing is, a lot of people don't like being told what to do, either in or out of character.

I don't mean to suggest coercing the players out of character.

I'm suggesting something more like "hey, let's run Descent to Avernus!" rather than "we WILL run Descent to Avernus, and you WILL like it!"

The second one is something I can't imagine going well.

Batcathat
2020-10-02, 12:10 AM
Your re-invention of what I said is certainly going too far. I made no comment about how good or bad the DMing was. I certainly never said it was “great DMing”.

I said that that one player’s action prevented the D&D game from happening. That’s not an “interpretation”; it’s a simple fact.

Okay. fair enough. Let's stick to exactly what you said.


You will never know if your brother's scenario twenty years ago would have been fun. He tried to create a game for you, and you stopped it. If you wanted to play D&D at that time, then your action prevented it.

Whether or not the scenario would have been fun, the GM tried to accomplish it by forcing the party to become mind controlled and when the OP tried to find a way around it (and avoiding having your mind controlled seems very reasonable to me, both in and out of character) the GM couldn't handle it. Summarizing that situation with "He tried to create a game for you, and you stopped it" seems rather unfair to me. Not to put words into your mouth again but by that logic any amount of railroading would be fine as long as it's with good intentions.

Luccan
2020-10-02, 01:23 AM
Just based on reading the OP:

You shouldn't write an adventure with the assumption that X will happen or the PCs will do X. This includes getting them thrown in prison. It's a perfectly reasonable outcome of their actions and one more tables should consider, along with surrender. But making it a requirement in an adventure means you need a reason for players and characters to want to be arrested. If this is a one shot or the opening of a campaign, just have them start in captivity. You can discuss how they got there and they may want to know if they can get their equipment back, but don't try to play out their arrest with actual combat. Some players would rather their character die than be captured, even if that runs counter to all their other goals.

As far as getting long-term pcs to want to be arrested, this is actually a decent place to draw on fiction. Consider some shows, books, or movies, where the only practical way to get to a particular individual is to infiltrate the prison community they're in. A slave revolt is even easier: if the players want to participate in a slave revolt, then it would be easier if they could actually communicate with the slaves. Consider also that in these sorts of stories it's often fairly easy to escape. At least for the main characters (PCs). But their other goals (free someone, kill someone, antagonize every military officer they can, etc.) are what actually trap them. These might not be "true" prison break scenarios, but they're generally easier to get long-term players on board with and the prison break part comes once they've fulfilled at least part of their task and must now make good their escape without being caught now that they've done X.

Talakeal
2020-10-02, 01:58 AM
I don't mean to suggest coercing the players out of character.

I'm suggesting something more like "hey, let's run Descent to Avernus!" rather than "we WILL run Descent to Avernus, and you WILL like it!"

The second one is something I can't imagine going well.

Oh, no, that's not what I meant either.

I meant most players, OOC, resent an NPC who tells their character what to do, and their character likely also resents that NPC IC.

Satinavian
2020-10-02, 01:59 AM
That seems bizarre to me both in and out of character. Out of character, you know the DM is going to offer you the chance to escape, because otherwise the campaign would end. In character, fighting to the death when the enemy has you dead rights is just dumb, if you surrender you can always live to fight another day.
Let's ignore out of character. If i am supposed to let my PC be captured for metagaming reasons, then the GM could just ask me out of game to do so and i would likely play along.

For a surrender of the whole group in game to make sense you need several conditions :

- The enemy must be overwhelmingly strong. If he is just somewhat stronger, then fighting retreat, breakthrough or even a prolonged siege look like more viable options than to be captured.
- The enemy must have enough reason to want a capture to actually fight the PCs for it. Most kinds of conflicts don't give that. Usually an enemy want to have the PCs stuff or control of the position or the PCs far out of the way. All of that is easier for the PCs to agree to. PCs of prisoners instead of PCs on the run are not particularly worth much for most enemies. Unless they want to do unpleasent things to the PCs which brings us to the next reasons.
- The enemy must be known to not want to do anything really nasty. If the enemy is out for revenge or a human sacrificing cult or anything like that PCs would likely sooner fight to death than surrender.
The enemy must have blocked all pathes of escape. Otherwise running away is an option. And if you want to catch the whole group, you have to catch the fastest, stealthiest one with the supernatural movement powers. Otherwise you only get part of the group and probably a rescue story instead of an outbreak.

In character, PCs know that prisoners hardly ever escape. Surrendering will bring whatever the enemy wants to do to you. Execution, slavery, mutilation, sacrifice, rape, torture, being eaten, whatever else. Depending only on what the enemy wants. Choosing surrender is choosing that. And you can't renege on your decision afterwards.


Sure, there are groups where you would expect to be treated well as prisoner. But those groups would usually not take you prisoner for no good reason in the first place, especcially if the PCs are decent people. You could do that angle with "falsely accused of a crime" stories. But... i have seen a couple of those where the PCs surrendered and then refused to break out, trusting the justice system to do its job properly.

Democratus
2020-10-02, 08:00 AM
Just like most other scenarios in a game, prisoner stories are just fine.

Several classic and very fun adventures have them.

And - like all other scenarios in a game - they can be ruined by either the DM or players.

It's not rocket science. :smallsmile:

Pleh
2020-10-02, 09:21 AM
Just run it as a one-shot or as the opening for a longer campaign. The game starts with the characters in jail already. And then you can ask cool leading questions about why and how they ended up there.

This is what I came here to say. You tell the players that the jailbreak is the pretext that leads to their first combined adventure. It's the first time they met and it was their teamwork that got them free.

The main downside is, why do they stay together after they get free? That's a question to hash out in session zero.

Kardwill
2020-10-02, 10:00 AM
Just run it as a one-shot or as the opening for a longer campaign. The game starts with the characters in jail already. And then you can ask cool leading questions about why and how they ended up there.

That's what I did the last time I ran a "prison break" style game. New characters, "Barbarian of Lemuria" (think "Conan") game, one-shot scenario, they simply started in an arena, with their cellmate asking them how they got there. So each player had the opportunity to tell a little story about how his character got thrown into jail : The rogue was caugnt in the bedchamber of the sultan's wife, the Conan-clone got into a drunken brawl where he killed several city guards before passing out, the sorcerer was set-up by his political enemies, etc... That way, their capture was an occasion to brag about their new characters' awesomeness, rather than an humiliation inflicted against established ones. And the characters were not "brought down" during play : Instead, they started at the bottom, and quickly made their way up (by causing a riot in the arena and killing the sultan in the next scene)

If I tried this kind of thing today, though I would also warn the players before the game and tell them what I have in mind and what it entails ("you will start as captive, but don't worry, it's only for the opening scene"), so that I can have player buy-in (and if most players are okay but one of them gives a hard "no" to the suggestion, then that player will simply skip that first scene and give me a reason why his character join the others after they escape.)

For scenarios like this one, player buy-in is important. And a player might accept when asked directly, when he would have fought to the bitter end if I tried to force a capture during the game.

Quertus
2020-10-02, 10:17 AM
Huge topic - where to start?

The "prison break" scenario is among the worst offenders for denial of Agency.

Unless you get the players to agree to start the adventure in prison, you have to railroad them to force the capture to happen.

Then you have to set up some contrivance to allow them to escape prison (ideally without ruining suspension of disbelief on the notion of prison as anything other than a revolving door).

In between, you have *prison*.

From the PoV of someone who recognizes that tailoring encounters to the party is an abridgment of player agency, most "prison break" scenarios are a railroad horror show sandwich.

As with all such things, it's a different story of you get the players on board to begin with. "This adventure is about running a prison break. Bring characters who will start in prison, and whom you will enjoy playing through this scenario", for example, is an acceptable pitch.

-----

On top of its problems, as a rule, a prison break scenario doesn't really offer much.

Of the times that my characters have been imprisoned… once, it allowed me to demonstrate how my dwarven beggar was much more acclimated to having nothing than his elven companions. And… that's it, for "reasons to go through this" that I can remember.

Far better, IMO, to TPK and bring new characters than to deal with such things.

kyoryu
2020-10-02, 11:15 AM
Oh, no, that's not what I meant either.

I meant most players, OOC, resent an NPC who tells their character what to do, and their character likely also resents that NPC IC.

Eh, I see two different scenarios:

1) Players have an idea of what they want to do, and then an NPC orders them to descend into Avernus. A LOT of players will react strongly to this.
2) Players agree that they're going to run Descent Into Avernus, and then an NPC orders them to descend into Avernus. Some people may bristle just at being ordered, but a lot more players will shrug and go "okay, I guess that's the plot hook."

Telok
2020-10-02, 12:38 PM
- The enemy must have enough reason to want a capture to actually fight the PCs for it. Most kinds of conflicts don't give that.
...
- The enemy must be known to not want to do anything really nasty.
...
The enemy must have blocked all pathes of escape.
...
In character, PCs know that prisoners hardly ever escape. Surrendering will bring whatever the enemy wants to do to you. Execution, slavery, mutilation, sacrifice, rape, torture, being eaten, whatever else. Depending only on what the enemy wants. Choosing surrender is choosing that. And you can't renege on your decision afterwards.

This is why I think the more modern game settings and genera like sci-fi or supers are easier to do this with. The players expect a more realistic level of treatment and rational action.

In the fantasy genera you mostly see the drow/ghouls/trolls/demon worshippers doing any and all of the nasty. Plus you mostly have murder-hobos, these "adventurers" with no homes, families, jobs, etc., that don't care if they slaughter a bunch of mook town guards because there won't be any real repercussions.

Historically imprisonment was bad, but it wasn't the totally inescapable horror-fest leading toinevitable execution that most fantasy goes with. Only in relatively modern times have most prisons become extremely hard to escape. For much of history prisons were mostly about the guards, prisoners inability to use money, and what the authorities did if you escaped. The actual unplesantness was generally directly inversely porportional to your social status and wealth. But most players don't know that stuff. The most famous stuff is the horror story ones, and that becomes the assumption for all fantasy imprisonment.

More modern settings have stuff like national, planetary, interstellar policing. There's an expectation of (usually) being taken alive and not too badly mistreated. Access to some resources and lawyers/advocates is assumed. Prisoner trasfers (always a good time to escape) are more common. Plus the modern systems tend to have "town guards" that are more than 2 hit die mooks with communications that aren't stopped by walking to the next town.

Pex
2020-10-02, 02:43 PM
Wrote this in another thread when discussion briefly coincided with this topic.

It was a hard lesson for me to learn as DM not to autocapture the party. I had a particular adventure arc in my campaign where being arrested was necessary. It was to introduce an important to the plot NPC they needed to meet at the jail and have the party encounter the evil sect of a Church that has three - good, neutral, evil. Autocapture was done often in my 2E years as a player, so I thought it ok at the time. I ran this adventure in 2E and then 3E without much trouble from the players. The idea is when the players encounter 5 bad guys surrounding the party demanding surrender you're supposed to fight them. When it's 20 bad guys you surrender because it's only a plot device. However, the last time I ran it, in a Pathfinder game 10 years or so ago, a player got really upset. He was going to fight them all head on or just run away, far away from the city and the adventure.

This was a major pet peeve of his, refusing to accept the plot device. I let his character escape, and he reunited with the party when they were finally released from custody. At the time I thought he overreacted, but later I saw it - how bad it was for a player. It was the last vestige of 2E DMing I had that I thought was proper. I promised myself I would never run this adventure arc again. The party has to be arrested. I can't get it to work any other way to put the important pieces in place, so I scrapped it from my campaign.

Kesnit
2020-10-02, 03:59 PM
I was in a game in which the DM told us we would all start in jail and that the campaign would begin with us escaping and going to work for (or returning to work for) an anti-slavery organization. She required that we build PCs that would fit in that setting.

I built a CG Saint Changling Cloistered Cleric/Warlock/Eldritch Disciple with VOP.

The first session turned us attempting to escape and her telling us none of our idea worked. (Magic doesn't work because there was an anti-magic field over the prison. The big strong melee types tried to beat up the guards and get keys. When that didn't work, they tried to punch through the walls. Now suddenly there was magic in the walls to keep them from doing it. So the casters tried to use touch spells (or my EB) on the walls, since there clearly was no anti-magic field there. The anti-magic field ended at the inner edge of the wall.) There was no second game.

If you want to start your party in prison, fine. But make sure you are aware of what the party can do and let them escape if they come up with a plan. Don't make them come up with YOUR plan...

Darth Credence
2020-10-02, 04:15 PM
Wow, Kesnit, that's really, really bad. I've never experienced anything that bad, and I feel luckier all the time when I read these.

Jay R
2020-10-02, 09:17 PM
Okay. fair enough. Let's stick to exactly what you said.



Whether or not the scenario would have been fun, the GM tried to accomplish it by forcing the party to become mind controlled and when the OP tried to find a way around it (and avoiding having your mind controlled seems very reasonable to me, both in and out of character) the GM couldn't handle it. Summarizing that situation with "He tried to create a game for you, and you stopped it" seems rather unfair to me.

The original poster's words were, "I had my character blind herself rather than be subject to his mind control, essentially ruining both his plot and my character, and thus the campaign came to quick end." [Emphasis added.] I am simply repeating that.


Not to put words into your mouth again ...

Then please stop doing so. Any judgment about that DM you come up with -- good, bad, or indifferent -- is entirely your own invention. Judging the DM was not germane to my points, and so I didn't do it.


... but by that logic any amount of railroading would be fine as long as it's with good intentions.

I was not discussing the DM. The DM didn't come here for advice.

And "He tried to create a game for you, and you stopped it" does not lead to "any amount of railroading would be fine". The first is a factual description of the action, and the second is a judgment about the DM. There is no logical connection between them.

I also wrote the following, discussing the same game:


If you didn't want to play that game of D&D, based on the knowledge you had at the time, then it would have been better to have simply said, "I don't want to play this scenario. I hope the rest of you have fun," and walked away from the game.

That is not saying that any amount of railroading would be fine. It's saying that any player can judge the DM's action as not acceptable at any time.

Also, in the same post, I wrote:


Players do not like encounters in which they are already going to lose, regardless of what they do. A scenario in which they are captured or imprisoned is an encounter in which the DM has already decided what will happen, regardless of their actions or the dice. For that reason, I tend to put the PCs in the position to start the campaign directly, instead of running a capture encounter to do it. DMs: Never use an encounter that could prevent your own scenario.

That's a straightforward argument against capture encounters, a statement that I don't use them, and explicit advice to DMs not to do it.

There is no fair or honest way to portray my words as supporting "Building an adventure that depend on railroading the PCs to get mind controlled and not being able to adapt to the reasonable reaction" or that I think it is "great GMing" or saying that "any amount of railroading would be fine as long as it's with good intentions".

I did not say those things. I did not imply those things. I did not think those things.

I did not judge the DM at all.

If you wish to discuss my post about DMs needing to work with players and players needing to work with DMs, I'd be happy to start that discussion with you.

But since I did not judge that DM, and since judging that DM is not necessary for my point about us working together, I will not continue (after this second attempt) in your sub-thread making up guesses about how I judged that DM. I didn't.

icefractal
2020-10-02, 09:59 PM
Sure, there are groups where you would expect to be treated well as prisoner. But those groups would usually not take you prisoner for no good reason in the first place, especcially if the PCs are decent people. You could do that angle with "falsely accused of a crime" stories. But... i have seen a couple of those where the PCs surrendered and then refused to break out, trusting the justice system to do its job properly.
Yeah, I mean - if the reason you surrendered is not wanting to be a hunted outlaw, then breaking out kind of defeats the purpose.

I guess I could see it in a "you surrendered because you thought this was like a 1-2 year sentence, but then they toss you in for 30" scenario. Although you can really only do that once, because the next time the players are going to be justifiably skeptical about trusting the system.

Players btw, not characters. Like using backstory NPCs as mainly a source of suffering, this is something that tends to last beyond a character, often beyond a single GM! Why are your players all orphan murder-hobos who would rather die than consider surrendering? Because the GM before the GM before you ****ed it up. Don't be the one who ****s it up for some future GM.

Pex
2020-10-02, 10:23 PM
Yeah, I mean - if the reason you surrendered is not wanting to be a hunted outlaw, then breaking out kind of defeats the purpose.

I guess I could see it in a "you surrendered because you thought this was like a 1-2 year sentence, but then they toss you in for 30" scenario. Although you can really only do that once, because the next time the players are going to be justifiably skeptical about trusting the system.

Players btw, not characters. Like using backstory NPCs as mainly a source of suffering, this is something that tends to last beyond a character, often beyond a single GM! Why are your players all orphan murder-hobos who would rather die than consider surrendering? Because the GM before the GM before you ****ed it up. Don't be the one who ****s it up for some future GM.

That is true. Players have to trust the DM. Once it's broken it's forever broken. PCs interrogate the captured orc then let him go. Orc comes back later with reinforcements attacking the party having informed them of the party's weaknesses. The players will forever more interrogate then kill every prisoner they acquire for every campaign everywhere. Attacking bandit runs away from battle but comes back with reinforcements who know the party's weaknesses. The players will always pursue every last bad guy they encounter. They will never let any escape. They will be hunted down in every campaign everywhere.

When the players play Good and show mercy, don't punish them for it. The freed prisoner or escaped bandit don't have to return as redeemed allies, unless you want to as DM. They can never be seen again. Just don't make the players regret their benevolence. There's a reason paladins have stopped arguing with rogues about killing the prisoner. Rogues won the argument by DM fiat.

Tanarii
2020-10-02, 11:37 PM
In D&D? Because it sucks. It's a heavily equipment and personal magic dependent game. You take away one and you have to nerf the other with DM Fiat.

It only partially works if you start the game that way with full disclosure, and even then in most modern versions you need to heavily restrict class choice, artificially limit magic, or provide the standard equipment almost immediately.

Other games handle it better. Blades in the Dark actually makes it look occasionally not only necessary, but interesting.

Pleh
2020-10-03, 04:38 AM
That is true. Players have to trust the DM. Once it's broken it's forever broken.

This actually depends on player disposition and exactly how flagrantly the trust was broken.

Trust can be rebuilt, too. Some cases may not, others may require OOC talk about it. But wasn't there a whole thread about how to get players to try risky actions? It's just another way of asking how to cultivate player trust.

You offer high risk with high reward and let them succeed. You make the risks worth doing, then reward them generously for taking the risks. Then you never "cash in" on their trust by using this system to blindside them later.

Ignimortis
2020-10-03, 05:58 AM
So, my question is, why do so many DMs, especially new DMs, need to strong arm players into going along with their adventures?

Likewise, why are players so utterly afraid of allowing themselves to be captured and taken prisoner?


1) Plots that don't mesh with characters created by the players. Players that don't want to do the plot and instead want to do something else. Basically, a failure to communicate coupled with typical new GM mistakes.

2) Captured and taken prisoner? Let's just say that I have a hard time even running from a fight I have at least a 5% chance of winning. I am incredibly stubborn and averse to losing, and if running away counts as losing, then surrendering or being taken prisoner is double-losing, and that really grinds my gears. Mind control is a particular pet peeve - using it on my characters is a surefire way of ensuring the user won't live till the end of the game.

Loss of control is a terrible thing, and I have always striven to maintain control of my character as hard as I can - usually that manifests in high capabilities at resisting all kinds of coercion (and violent responses to said coercion). So my preferred way of getting out of a capture/prisoner situation would be "kill everyone trying to take me captive, with my bare hands if need be", and generally the systems allow me to do that, unless the GM breaks the rules to just force that situation to happen. I just might leave the game in that case, though.

This post is unusually aggressive by my standards, but that's how I feel about those things.

Quertus
2020-10-03, 08:15 AM
The original poster's words were, "I had my character blind herself rather than be subject to his mind control, essentially ruining both his plot and my character, and thus the campaign came to quick end." [Emphasis added.] I am simply repeating that.

That is not saying that any amount of railroading would be fine. It's saying that any player can judge the DM's action as not acceptable at any time.

So, I know this is going to sound dumb (because blinding your character is such an extreme action), but... if someone trusts their GM, shouldn't they trust that their GM has created the scenario such that the game won't break if they do what it is in character for them to do?

Put another way, why should the player have to metagame what the GM intended to happen in a scene?


I did not judge the DM at all.

Maybe we should.

Or, more importantly, maybe the OP should sit down with the GM, and discuss gaming theory, with an emphasis on Railroading and Player Agency, and see if there is a style of game that they will both enjoy.


This actually depends on player disposition and exactly how flagrantly the trust was broken.

Trust can be rebuilt, too. Some cases may not, others may require OOC talk about it. But wasn't there a whole thread about how to get players to try risky actions? It's just another way of asking how to cultivate player trust.

You offer high risk with high reward and let them succeed. You make the risks worth doing, then reward them generously for taking the risks. Then you never "cash in" on their trust by using this system to blindside them later.

Eh, gotta quibble slightly here with the bolded bit. Getting players to take risky actions involves more than just building trust, *and* its trust-building exercise is just one type of trust building (rather than them being inherently identical statements). So, trust-building is ice cream; getting players to take risky actions is hot-fudge-topped-cookie-dough-ice-cream-over-brownies (no nuts).

Pleh
2020-10-03, 09:20 AM
Eh, gotta quibble slightly here with the bolded bit. Getting players to take risky actions involves more than just building trust, *and* its trust-building exercise is just one type of trust building (rather than them being inherently identical statements). So, trust-building is ice cream; getting players to take risky actions is hot-fudge-topped-cookie-dough-ice-cream-over-brownies (no nuts).

I don't really follow what you're saying here beyond, "it's more than that."

More in what way?

Quertus
2020-10-03, 09:59 AM
I don't really follow what you're saying here beyond, "it's more than that."

More in what way?

Sure. Dumb example: maybe I just don't like taking risky actions. All the trust in the world won't change that.

Maybe the safe answer is better. The Determinator won't take the risky action, no matter how much they trust the GM.

Maybe the side effects of the safe vs risky action make the safe action work better with the Chess Master's secret master plan. So they'll keep doing what actually works for what they want, regardless of how incentivized in the moment the risky plan is, regardless of how much they trust the GM.

Etc etc etc.

Trying to just sell ice cream as the solution to this "hot-fudge-topped-cookie-dough-ice-cream-over-brownies (no nuts)" problem works for those for whom ice cream is the only missing ingredient. But it's a bigger topic than the ice-cream-pushers would have you believe.

That's what I was trying to say.

Tanarii
2020-10-03, 11:58 AM
So, I know this is going to sound dumb (because blinding your character is such an extreme action), but... if someone trusts their GM, shouldn't they trust that their GM has created the scenario such that the game won't break if they do what it is in character for them to do?

Put another way, why should the player have to metagame what the GM intended to happen in a scene?
What's that got to do with the price of milk?

According to the OP, in this specific case, the PC taking the action of blinding themself to avoid mind control explicitly ended the game. It did so in two ways:
- it ruined the DMs plot.
- it ruined the character.

Trusting the DM to not have the game break when taking in character actions either didn't enter into it, because things done while mind controlled aren't in character actions. Or that trust was broken, because blinding was in character, and the game then ended. (If the latter is your point, then I missed it all the way until I got the end of typing this. :smallwink: )

Yora
2020-10-03, 04:18 PM
Other games handle it better. Blades in the Dark actually makes it look occasionally not only necessary, but interesting.

Modern D&D wants to eat its cake and have it too. It wants to keep all the elements from being a resource-focused dungeon crawling system while also being a story-centric game.
It's forcing a square peg into a round hole for over 30 years (though it got much worse since 3rd edition) and it's a miracle of brand recognition that it's still around.
Having the name of D&D on the cover, which makes it many people's first and only RPG, is probably the only reason why so many GMs and players never notice the huge pile of legacy baggage they are struggling with as being a nuisance that holds back fun.

Tanarii
2020-10-03, 04:37 PM
Modern D&D wants to eat its cake and have it too. It wants to keep all the elements from being a resource-focused dungeon crawling system while also being a story-centric game.
It's forcing a square peg into a round hole for over 30 years (though it got much worse since 3rd edition) and it's a miracle of brand recognition that it's still around.I blame 2e. As much as I absolutely adored them, the plethora or campaign settings and historical novels trying to 'showcase' D&D for everything. And that was definitely the time when roleplaying elitism approached its zenith (or nadir for everyone not an RP elitist). It's hardly surprising that the infamous GNS followed shortly thereafter.

Jorren
2020-10-03, 05:29 PM
I blame 2e. As much as I absolutely adored them, the plethora or campaign settings and historical novels trying to 'showcase' D&D for everything. And that was definitely the time when roleplaying elitism approached its zenith (or nadir for everyone not an RP elitist). It's hardly surprising that the infamous GNS followed shortly thereafter.

Yet I still see players way too young to have ever played 2e still trying to use D&D for every type of game imaginable whether or not it is a good fit or not. I really think it goes far beyond that. I think it is a matter of the game simply being so ubiquitous that it doesn't even occur to many people to think about a different system. In other words, D&D is synonymous with rpg. It's like Kleenex.

kingcheesepants
2020-10-03, 09:49 PM
If the DM couldn't figure out any method of advancing their plot without mind controlling the player, that sounds like a problem with the plot and or DM. Having someone else control your very thoughts and force you to take actions against your will is an invasion and destruction of self more insidious than just about anything else and I would not expect anyone to do anything less than their best to avoid it. Blinding yourself is extreme sure but if that's the only way at hand to avoid mind control it is absolutely justified. D&D has various ways of regenerating eyes or using other senses to fight and work effectively even when blind. Being blind is a challenge to be sure but not an insurmountable one.

As a DM I do use mind controlling enemies, but the players always have warning of what they're getting into beforehand (they meet mind controlled NPCs or have other hints that they're dealing with someone with mind control) and they can work to get things that might protect them from such effects and they always get at least a chance to make a saving throw. Even if they don't make their saves I still have the player control the characters actions. I tell the player you've been mind controlled and you're being ordered to kill the wizard (or what have you) and then they tell me what they do. I find that players can be very creative in interpreting their "master's" orders and following the letter of the order while walking all over the spirit of it, this allows for the use of mind control while still being a fun roleplaying opportunity for the player instead of just the DM telling the players what they do while they sit by helplessly.

I would also second the general consensus here, being taken prisoner is effectively giving up all player agency and giving yourself to an uncertain but presumably bad fate. Sure the DM probably isn't bothering to take you prisoner if he doesn't have some prison escape planned soon (and those can be fun) but why would anyone willingly put themselves under such subjugation? Unless there's something that I knew I needed to find/do in the prison I would do my best to avoid capture.

In actual games I've played, every being taken prisoner type event led to long boring periods of inactivity and powerlessness as I waited around for non captured players (or friendly NPCs) to come rescue me or frustrating periods of trial and error as I try to find the "right" way to escape (the way the DM thought of earlier). I don't take my one afternoon off in order to sit around waiting as my character sits chained up in a cell, I came to play as a powerful warrior or wizard or whatever who overcomes great challenges and saves the world. Waiting around in a cell as the DM tells me, the guards don't come when you yell for them, there are no weakpoints in the wall or bars, you cannot cast any spells, etc etc etc, well it's incredibly humiliating, frustrating and boring. And that is the reason why I as a player go to great lengths to avoid imprisonment.

Also as a player I talked to the DMs that I've had who did being taken prisoner type events and afterwards I explained my frustrations with those types of events and it led to a better experience overall where they have worked to be more flexible in giving options or saying yes to player ideas and trying to get players into the plot without removing agency. It's a lot more fun for everyone that way. Just talk to your DM and explain that you don't want to lose agency or sit around powerless for extended periods.

tl:dr player agency good, talk to your DM

Pex
2020-10-03, 09:52 PM
In the past an unfortunate legitimate TPK could turn into the party prisoner scenario. When the players wanted to keep their characters, and the TPK was a result of absolutely bad luck or maybe the DM Honest True goofed on the difficulty, the campaign continues with the PCs captured instead of killed. The TPK is still its usual sore point, but the players buy in to keep the campaign going. I could accept this, though I know some people here would rather the TPK remain.

Quertus
2020-10-03, 10:16 PM
What's that got to do with the price of milk?

According to the OP, in this specific case, the PC taking the action of blinding themself to avoid mind control explicitly ended the game. It did so in two ways:
- it ruined the DMs plot.
- it ruined the character.

Trusting the DM to not have the game break when taking in character actions either didn't enter into it, because things done while mind controlled aren't in character actions. Or that trust was broken, because blinding was in character, and the game then ended. (If the latter is your point, then I missed it all the way until I got the end of typing this. :smallwink: )

I think you got it at the end. :smallwink:

If we're going to talk about trust, why not trust that the GM has made a good game that can be played in character? Why not trust that, if the GM needs something to happen, that they will talk to the players like adults instead of requiring metagaming + spontaneous unsolicited Participationism (or Railroading)?

IME, most GMs are not worthy of such trust. Which is (part of) why I traditionally laugh when "trust" and "GM" are placed in the same sentence.

If we're talking of trust, then the GM broke that trust by creating a fragile game that could not be played in character (however extreme that "in character" might be in this case). Honestly, I'm one part really impressed that the OP thought to blind themselves to escape the sight-based mind control, and one part confused why they didn't just, like, close their eyes or something.

-----

Highly related to the main topic of the thread, "going along with the plot" (of being captured) requires knowing that (being captured) is "the plot". I, personally, very intentionally try not to metagame "the plot", so as not to, like, murder NPC #17 the moment we meet him, because, from a metagame perspective, it's obvious that they're the mole / the BBEG in disguise / have the plague / going to steal from us / insert whatever "intended problem" the GM wants to throw at us. Also, because the game is more fun for me the less I metagame.

Point is, the players can't "go along with" a prison break if they don't know that they're "supposed to" get captured in the first place. Them avoiding capture - even scoring a TPK in the process - just makes sense, both in character and/or from the metagame "this is what is fun for me", "everything is supposed to be CR-appropriate" / "the GM should custom tailor encounters to the party" / or even "this is an adventure for level X characters" perspective.

(Setting up) a "prison break" scene is a complete violation of all of those principles. It requires you to break all of those expectations. So, what can I say beyond of course it's one of the things most likely to encounter some resistance. It violates pretty much everything, from player agency, to trust, to CaS level-appropriate encounters.

kyoryu
2020-10-03, 11:30 PM
I blame 2e. As much as I absolutely adored them, the plethora or campaign settings and historical novels trying to 'showcase' D&D for everything. And that was definitely the time when roleplaying elitism approached its zenith (or nadir for everyone not an RP elitist). It's hardly surprising that the infamous GNS followed shortly thereafter.

GNS really seems like a reaction to the railroads of the 90s more than anything else. If anything, it's probably focused more squarely at the White Wolf metaplots than anything else.

Satinavian
2020-10-04, 02:05 AM
IME, most GMs are not worthy of such trust. Which is (part of) why I traditionally laugh when "trust" and "GM" are placed in the same sentence.

If we're talking of trust, then the GM broke that trust by creating a fragile game that could not be played in character (however extreme that "in character" might be in this case). Honestly, I'm one part really impressed that the OP thought to blind themselves to escape the sight-based mind control, and one part confused why they didn't just, like, close their eyes or something.
I don't know but i do trust all of my GMs. At the moment i am in 5 active groups, all with rotating GMs. And that works well, that trust is never broken.

GMs here do ask "I want to GM this module, but it is a bit railroady. I am trying to town it down, but there will be 2 scenes that basically just happen. Are you OK with that ?"

And if one of them wanted to run a prison break scenario he or she would likely ask as well.


Twenty years ago, there were way more ****ty GMs around. But imho the roleplaying community got older and learned from mistakes. Advice and best practices changed and bad GMs are likely to meet some veteran players giving them a hint rather sooner than later.



I can't even remember when "trust the GM" was last talked about in a real group. Even the last discussion about "PCs should take more risks" was all about risk preferrences of the player and eventually some houseruled metacurrency to mitigate risks.

Mr Beer
2020-10-04, 04:31 PM
I have had several imprisonment games, they all went well IIRC.

I ran Scourge of the Slave Lords once, I think the PCs are supposed to be captured by DM fiat a total of 3 times during that one. I did it once, skipped the second and the third one I had the numbers to capture them but the PCs performed better than expected and I let the dice fall. I think 3 unavoidable captures is too many in one campaign unless it's a running gag.

Tanarii
2020-10-04, 05:42 PM
GNS really seems like a reaction to the railroads of the 90s more than anything else. If anything, it's probably focused more squarely at the White Wolf metaplots than anything else.
Edwards classified those as "Simulationism" rather than "Narratavism", which tells you pretty much all you need to know about his theory. But yeah, you could be right on that.

One thing I've never been clear on is if the theory was what spawned (or solidified) the idea of narrative mechanics, which have even crept into (in a minor way) D&D at this point. It seems likely given Luke Crane's Burning Wheel.

Edit: which circles back around again to: some games can handle (or survive past) the PCs get taken prisoner much better than others. Or the PCs retreat. Or even the PCs die / mutilate themselves rather than be mind controlled.

Duff
2020-10-04, 06:55 PM
If the players starts as prisoners, you don't have the issue of having to capture the PCs in game. It makes the module less suited for slotting into an ongoing campaign however.

To some extent any plot a GM runs requires cooperation from the players. The GM says "There's a dungeon over there". The players know that the game won't work if their characters go "Lets buy a bakery and make bread". The more your plot is scripted/planned and the more it's linear - requiring the characters to go from one scene to the next, the more you need the players to go along with you on this.

You can get player cooperation in a few ways:
Before you start the campaign, it's a good idea to give the players some idea of what to expect. "I want to run a D&D campaign which will start at 5th level with characters in the dreaded prison that Castle Ravenblack was turned into by the evil empire. The PCs have realised they're more skilled than most of the prisoners and have decided it's time to escape". And you're off to the races if you get players.
Or
"Hi guys, you've just made 5th level. The next adventure I want to run needs you all to be captured so you can escape and meet people you'll need later. I'm going to just narrate this bit, OK?" Maybe that's fine. Maybe the players object. Have the conversation, but if the players aren't willing to let you narrate their capture, it's better not to make that a needed point in your plot.
Or
Have an encounter which is at the high end of what the party can manage with enemies who have means and motive to take prisoners. Maybe slavers, maybe bounty hunters who need to bring them in for trial. Have your prison scene ready so that if it goes against them, instead of a TPK you have the prison break. Feel free as a few of them go down to reasure the players loosing isn't the end of the campaign.

Similar rules apply to mind control - If you want to take away the player's control of their character, keep it short or expect both player and character resistance unless you've gotten player agreement first

icefractal
2020-10-05, 03:37 PM
I ran Scourge of the Slave Lords once, I think the PCs are supposed to be captured by DM fiat a total of 3 times during that one. I did it once, skipped the second and the third one I had the numbers to capture them but the PCs performed better than expected and I let the dice fall. I think 3 unavoidable captures is too many in one campaign unless it's a running gag.
I remember reading that. The last one seemed especially obnoxious to me because:
* It's completely by fiat, and also happens instead of the long awaited final confrontation that it looks like is going to happen.
* The module has a whole pep talk to the GM about how "players might not like being captured again by fiat, but if you don't do it then they're missing some really great roleplaying that will make the entire thing 200% better"
* That "really great roleplaying" was, AFAICT, the chance to stumble through a dungeon without any gear, again, something that the author apparently couldn't get enough of. Yeah, the titular Slavelords all come by to taunt/interrogate/question you, but IIRC there's little detail and the only thing of importance mentioned is that you were all part of this one guy's plot the whole time, which there were plenty of other ways to reveal.

It's always kind of weird when I see those modules listed as among the best of the best. Yes, they do have a lot of detail and some good descriptions, but no group I've been in would have found them enjoyable.

Democratus
2020-10-05, 04:07 PM
It's always kind of weird when I see those modules listed as among the best of the best. Yes, they do have a lot of detail and some good descriptions, but no group I've been in would have found them enjoyable.

A product of their times, as much as anything else.

Back in the early 1980's these were interesting scenarios that broke the standard "climb in dungeon and kill things" mould. The overarching plot and the interactions with the various NPCs was pretty novel.

Just like early television vs. modern episodic storytelling - D&D adventure writing has come a long way in 40 years. "All in the Family" is still spoken about as a classic TV show. But I don't think many modern viewers would compare it favorably to a contemporary show like "Breaking Bad".

Tanarii
2020-10-05, 08:14 PM
Just like early television vs. modern episodic storytelling - D&D adventure writing has come a long way in 40 years. "All in the Family" is still spoken about as a classic TV show. But I don't think many modern viewers would compare it favorably to a contemporary show like "Breaking Bad".
I mean I was able to recognize it as terrible as a teen in the late 80s. But so we're pretty much all the 80s and 90s sit coms. There really wasn't anything like Breaking Bad, or GoT, or Rome, until The Sopranos.

Conversely, roleplaying has long had outstanding modules that are Breaking Bad good. They're just few and far between. Keep on the Borderland and The Caverns of Thracia for example.

There's no real progression to "modern" modules. More the opposite. The majority of modern modules are just as terrible if not more terrible than the typical below average older modules.

Mr Beer
2020-10-06, 03:24 AM
I remember reading that. The last one seemed especially obnoxious to me because:
* It's completely by fiat, and also happens instead of the long awaited final confrontation that it looks like is going to happen.
* The module has a whole pep talk to the GM about how "players might not like being captured again by fiat, but if you don't do it then they're missing some really great roleplaying that will make the entire thing 200% better"
* That "really great roleplaying" was, AFAICT, the chance to stumble through a dungeon without any gear, again, something that the author apparently couldn't get enough of. Yeah, the titular Slavelords all come by to taunt/interrogate/question you, but IIRC there's little detail and the only thing of importance mentioned is that you were all part of this one guy's plot the whole time, which there were plenty of other ways to reveal.

It's always kind of weird when I see those modules listed as among the best of the best. Yes, they do have a lot of detail and some good descriptions, but no group I've been in would have found them enjoyable.

Yeah the problem is it's completely by fiat as you say, and because it's the third time, and that's just super obnoxious for the most tolerant of players.

I actually really enjoyed running the zero gear dungeon crawl in another, earlier campaign with a different group. Before the 4 modules were collected and given an overarching plot, it was the only planned PC capture. It was fun and different. But I couldn't bring myself to capture the party by DM fiat again - a couple of the players were getting antsy first time around - so I just didn't run it when they won the fight.

I wouldn't call the zero gear thing "really great roleplaying" though, just something a bit different.

Pleh
2020-10-06, 05:19 AM
I wouldn't call the zero gear thing "really great roleplaying" though, just something a bit different.

I want to take this thought further.

Many games make use of the trope of getting captured and losing your stuff, having to break free to get it back.

This is a fine model for changing the pace of a game. It will force players to improvise now that you have changed their playbook temporarily.

There's a reason video games, if they use the trope at all, usually do so around the halfway/two thirds mark. The player has gotten familiar with the core loop and primary tools and the only advancement of the game is adding additional layers to the core loop. This runs a risk of jumping the shark near the end game, so it can be worthwhile around the midpoint to make the player reflect on how they started and how much they appreciate their tools, so they aren't taking them for granted.

It's heavy handed, but a good GM can make it feel less so (particularly by making sure this phase doesn't last very long).

My point being there really isn't any need to do this more than once in a campaign.

"It makes the players improvise." Sure, but once they establish a successful strategy for what to do with this scenario, you get diminishing returns fast. The more you put them in this scenario, the less time the get to play with their toys, and the more likely they are just grinding through the prison break with the same tactics trying to get back to what they actually wanted to play. This is where GMs need to resist the temptation to raise the stakes by countering their "unarmed" prison break strategies. You are prolonging a part of the game the players wanted to avoid to begin with. They'll have more fun if you let them get their stuff back sooner. You're in danger of power tripping and taking away their agency so you can put your players into a rat maze for your own amusement.

So wield the prison encounter sparingly, unless your players actually wanted to play a scoundrel's campaign where running in and out of prisons is half the fun.

Vahnavoi
2020-10-06, 05:48 AM
There's no real progression to "modern" modules. More the opposite. The majority of modern modules are just as terrible if not more terrible than the typical below average older modules.

That's part of the reason why OSR became a thing. In the larger world, it's part of the reason why there was something of a retro game boom in the field of videogames: people realized that games hadn't really improved as games and some old design schemas weren't actually obsolete, they'd just fallen out of use.

Kardwill
2020-10-06, 05:56 AM
In the past an unfortunate legitimate TPK could turn into the party prisoner scenario. When the players wanted to keep their characters, and the TPK was a result of absolutely bad luck or maybe the DM Honest True goofed on the difficulty, the campaign continues with the PCs captured instead of killed. The TPK is still its usual sore point, but the players buy in to keep the campaign going. I could accept this, though I know some people here would rather the TPK remain.

A good way to do it is the concession mechanic found in games like Fate : If they think they're losing the fight, players can offer a concession, i.e. "losing on their own terms", like "They'll capture Oswin and me, but Gunthar will be left for dead. Deal?" Since the player and GM have to agree with the concession, and concession is chosen by the losing party, it always has player buy-in. And if retreating/being captured/having one of them fall in the river so that the others have to rescue him is not something they want to do, then they can always fight to the bitter end. Their decision.

There is also the "setting the stakes" in other games like Burning Wheel or Heroquest : At the start of the fight, both sides agree about what will happen to the losing party ("If you lose, the Princess and one of you will be captured, and the others will have to fall back and regroup. If you win, you kill most of the kidnappers, and manage to capture one alive for interrogation. Okay?")

Even in D&D, it's pretty easy to put a house-rule saying "0 HP means you're out of the fight, but it can be a capture if you agree"

Duff
2020-10-06, 09:32 PM
A good way to do it is the concession mechanic found in games like Fate : If they think they're losing the fight, players can offer a concession, i.e. "losing on their own terms", like "They'll capture Oswin and me, but Gunthar will be left for dead. Deal?" Since the player and GM have to agree with the concession, and concession is chosen by the losing party, it always has player buy-in. And if retreating/being captured/having one of them fall in the river so that the others have to rescue him is not something they want to do, then they can always fight to the bitter end. Their decision.

There is also the "setting the stakes" in other games like Burning Wheel or Heroquest : At the start of the fight, both sides agree about what will happen to the losing party ("If you lose, the Princess and one of you will be captured, and the others will have to fall back and regroup. If you win, you kill most of the kidnappers, and manage to capture one alive for interrogation. Okay?")

Even in D&D, it's pretty easy to put a house-rule saying "0 HP means you're out of the fight, but it can be a capture if you agree"

My character's last words in the last D&D game I played (4E) was "PARLEY!!"
Sadly, the foe who was beating the snot out of us was deafened early in the fight...

D+1
2020-10-07, 07:11 PM
So, my question is, why do so many DMs, especially new DMs, need to strong arm players into going along with their adventures?

Likewise, why are players so utterly afraid of allowing themselves to be captured and taken prisoner?

Is there any right way to run a jailbreak / slave revolt scenario?
Players control one thing in the game - their characters. And most of what they do doesn't have an assurance of even working. If they attack, they have to roll to hit and at lower levels will miss MOST of the time. If they parley and attempt diplomacy they must still roll checks against relevant skills or attributes and opportunities to take that kind of approach to solving challenges don't always come up or aren't always practical. The DM controls ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING ELSE. The DM has as many opponents for the PC's as he/she desires, regardless of whether the PC's defeat them or not. The opponents for the PC's don't always even need to be numerous - they can just be overpowered individually. The DM's monsters and NPC's are going to lose A LOT. Players can kill all they want, the DM has more. If the dice are going against the DM, meh. Just means the PC's have an easier game session. But if dice are going against the PC's, their ONE character apiece is ON THE LINE. On top of failing to succeed at the things they choose to try there is magic and circumstances to deny them even the choice to attempt it. There are holds, charms, and all manner of things which can inhibit what the players might have their characters ATTEMPT to do.

And into this mix we have a DM whose ENTIRE SCENARIO is to deny the players the little bit of agency they have. It will matter not a whit what they attempt to do - the ultimate outcome of any events has been predestined by the DM and that outcome is that the player characters FAIL. THEY WILL NOT SUCCEED. Whatever they do THEY WILL BE IMPRISONED. For characters in a novel that's interesting and even exciting. In an RPG that's F'D UP as far as any player is concerned. Basically you've turned all the players into spectators while the DM forces them to watch their characters dance to the puppeteers tune without even the courtesy of expected levels of magic to make it so.

Now for new DM's it's not at all surprising that they should not KNOW this is a bad thing to do to players. New DM's have a LOT to handle and if anything it seems especially attractive to them to ensure that the PC's are firmly under control and dancing the appropriate dance. They don't understand yet that their job as DM is they get to puppeteer everything EXCEPT the player characters. The PC's might choose to dance a DIFFERENT dance - because the entire game revolves around giving the players permission to choose their own dance (or even to choose not dancing at all). If the DM is going to CONTROL the player characters they have to be VERY careful about how and WHY they do that. Preventing the PC's from choosing their own actions or suspending normal outcomes of those actions is nothing less than saying, "You don't get to play." There are of course spells and abilities and such which accomplish those ends, but then you HAVE to give players the normal and expected chances of reducing or counteracting those effects. And the DM can simply ensure that there are SO MANY such spells and effects that even with all the saves and immunities and magical counteractions that a PC might have they will always be overwhelmed. That's the same thing as just saying, "I don't care what you do - IT FAILS. You don't get to play." The DM HAS to let the players still do what it was they are there to do - to play their characters rather than just watch helplessly as the DM does what he/she wants with them.

This is something the DMG's of various editions haven't ever brought up. It's a lesson you have to learn from other sources. Even DM's who've been playing a while may not have heard this advice and will blunder into it and have to learn it the hard way - by being burned. They're VERY rarely TRYING to be jerks - they simply haven't learned this yet. They don't yet fully grasp what it means to FORCE an outcome onto players rendering their very participation moot.

New players, on some level, tend to grasp this concept much sooner than new DM's. They feel the DIRECT effect of controls, charms, etc upon their characters - they lose the ability to participate through the ONLY means the game permits them to interact... which is their character. When faced then with a DM who is bound and determined that all the PC's will end up imprisoned come hell or high water, players will fight savagely and even IRRATIONALLY in an attempt to maintain even a MINIMAL degree of control of their characters - and thus at least a MINIMAL means of continued interactive participation. The DM in such cases lack the perspective of the player and doesn't understand that the player is only reacting naturally to having their participation completely shut down. The players in turn lack the perspective of the DM who rarely if ever thinks of this as a permanent state, but merely a temporary setback intended to create an unusual and supposedly fun/interesting adventure start. They don't TRUST the DM enough yet to simply GIVE UP all their agency even for a short while - but they can actually use what little agency the DM can't take away to simply bring the entire game to a screeching halt - even (as the OP indicates) sacrificing their PC's altogether in defiance of the DM's attempt to take away the last bit of control the players have over the fate of their characters. They'd sometimes rather the PC be DEAD than just a helpless puppet forced to dance for the DM.

IS there a right way to run a jailbreak or slave revolt scenario? Yes. Start by NOT forcing all the PC's into captivity. Such scenarios have a LOT more possibilities anyway if there are characters both on the inside and the outside. Next, ASSUME that the PC's are RAPIDLY going to succeed at breaking out. Understand also that some characters are going to have a VASTLY tougher time of it than others when stripped of their possessions. If the DM intends that this captivity actually last a while then don't just AMBUSH the players with it - get them on board with the idea ahead of time. And if they aren't willing to go along DON'T FORCE IT... find something else to do. COMMUNICATE with the players. Recognize that if the players have spent a bunch of levels working hard to get to a certain level of capability they're going to want to enjoy the fruits of that. They aren't likely to be excited to suddenly lose their gear and abilities because of captivity. They have every reason and right to not want to take giant steps backward at ANY point.

Talakeal
2020-10-11, 10:28 PM
Snip.

I agree with what you are saying, but most of it, IMO, comes down to railroading rather than being specifically about capture.

Also, the idea that a PC would rather die than being taken captive is, IMO, poor both poor RPing and poor sportsmanship, and comes across as childishly cutting off your nose to spite your face. The vast majority of people IRL surrender when they realize they are in over their head, and I don't see why it would be any different in a fantasy world, and out of character it basically boils down to taking your ball and going home because you don't like how the game is going.

Now, these can come at cross purposes, for example I get rather into character, and in the story in my OP I mentioned blinding myself to avoid mind control and ruining the game. Now, in that case I was "only playing my character," and I felt that, given the situation, she would, almost literally, cut off her nose to spite her face, but it still wrecks the game OOC.


Honestly, I think it is less an issue of railroading or control than one of pride. For example, if I were to start a session with the players having been given the quest to slay a dragon by the king, or finding an old treasure map to a lost dungeon, few players would have a problem with engaging with the premise of the adventure, on the other hand if you started with them having been captured and managing a jailbreak or leading a slave revolt, players would lose their minds because, I really think, it hurts their ego and makes their characters look week or subservient, and I don't think that is a reasonable response.

On the other hand, I don't think it should be used constantly, or if it is inappropriate for the character. Starting a jailbreak scenario with an honorbound samurai who has taken an aoth to never suffer defeat having surrendered is roughly as jarring as telling the amoral assassin that he has decided to take part in a holy crusade to help the church liberate the land from an evil lich with no promise of reward.



They have every reason and right to not want to take giant steps backward at ANY point.

I can't agree with this.

Now, I honestly don't know how literally you meant this, but you used a lot of extreme and absolute language.

Taken at face value, this means that you also can't run any low-key or undercover scenario, or one where you are trying to hold back for whatever reason. Taken further, it means no adventures in strange environments that impede the PCs abilities such as many planes, dead magic zones, or underwater, and even places where the players aren't allowed to walk around armed and armored. It also might mean you can't use enemies who have resistances or immunities to the players main forms of attacks, or those who inflict long lasting status conditions. It means you can't steal or destroy the PCs gear over the course of play, or allow them to take permanent injuries. And, worst of all, it means you can't have setbacks which stem from a soft loss condition, making the game a binary of victory or death.

Again, I don't know how seriously you meant this versus using absolute statements for effect, but this really ties the DMs hands, and creates a game that is, imo, very safe, bland, and lacking in creativity and mechanical diversity. This is the same line of thought that lead to the 4E eras much maligned "player entitlement" philosophy where the game boils down to a bunch of same-y encounters that have no long term repercussions and are thus utterly meaningless in the long run.

Quertus
2020-10-12, 05:57 PM
the idea that a PC would rather die than being taken captive is, IMO, poor both poor RPing and poor sportsmanship, and comes across as childishly cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Not at all! This is the epitome of being a team player… at least, if you ask the Determinator. See, it is much easier for the rest of the party to resurrect them than to rescue them. Certainly it requires less precious game time.


The vast majority of people IRL surrender when they realize they are in over their head, and I don't see why it would be any different in a fantasy world, and out of character it basically boils down to taking your ball and going home because you don't like how the game is going.

In CaS, with the assumption of balanced encounters, one should never surrender.


Now, these can come at cross purposes, for example I get rather into character, and in the story in my OP I mentioned blinding myself to avoid mind control and ruining the game. Now, in that case I was "only playing my character," and I felt that, given the situation, she would, almost literally, cut off her nose to spite her face, but it still wrecks the game OOC.

The GM should not create a game so fragile as to be so easily wrecked.


Honestly, I think it is less an issue of railroading or control than one of pride. For example, if I were to start a session with the players having been given the quest to slay a dragon by the king, or finding an old treasure map to a lost dungeon, few players would have a problem with engaging with the premise of the adventure, on the other hand if you started with them having been captured and managing a jailbreak or leading a slave revolt, players would lose their minds because, I really think, it hurts their ego and makes their characters look week or subservient, and I don't think that is a reasonable response.

I have mixed feelings about this. But mostly really bad ones.

If that's your players' motivation, find better players.

If the king wants to entrust a "slay the Dragon" quest to Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, well, it's not unlike the GM who wanted to entrust the "slay the good and rightful king" quest to the Paladin. But it is technically within their power to make that claim (and it informs us just how silly the king/GM is, and how poorly things are going to work out for them). OTOH, the claim that a group of 0-level goblins captured Quertus is fairly laughable. When you look at that last statement, you might begin to think, "OK, what *would* it take" or "*why* would that be laughable". From there, it's not a huge leap to realizing that prescripted incarceration takes away from the players' Agency to have their characters' statistics and tactics and choices matter.

Armus, however, was introduced (at 1st level) to the then 7th level party as a prisoner that they "rescued" (really, Armus rescued them, but that's a long story). It worked well (sort of), although most of the party treated Armus like garbage for quite some time. Despite the huge cast of characters that kept being introduced - many as prisoners - I cannot answer to what extent to blame Armus' poor treatment on the PCs, the GM, the level difference, the prisoner status, the "7 levels of fellowship" the party had, or some other components.

However, that's "starting a game". "Starting a session" in the middle of an existing campaign is a completely different beast. That's "the GM played our characters" territory - and there's a rhyme about just how terrible that is. Don't do that. No, not even to accept a job from the king. Feel free to *ask* the players if that makes sense for their characters, and if you can just time skip past that setup to the "this has happened", though.


Taken at face value, this means that you also can't run any low-key or undercover scenario, or one where you are trying to hold back for whatever reason. Taken further, it means no adventures in strange environments that impede the PCs abilities such as many planes, dead magic zones, or underwater, and even places where the players aren't allowed to walk around armed and armored. It also might mean you can't use enemies who have resistances or immunities to the players main forms of attacks, or those who inflict long lasting status conditions. It means you can't steal or destroy the PCs gear over the course of play, or allow them to take permanent injuries. And, worst of all, it means you can't have setbacks which stem from a soft loss condition, making the game a binary of victory or death.

Again, I don't know how seriously you meant this versus using absolute statements for effect, but this really ties the DMs hands, and creates a game that is, imo, very safe, bland, and lacking in creativity and mechanical diversity. This is the same line of thought that lead to the 4E eras much maligned "player entitlement" philosophy where the game boils down to a bunch of same-y encounters that have no long term repercussions and are thus utterly meaningless in the long run.

I'm not sure how seriously you meant that, but… most of what you said "the GM can't do" is bad, and they shouldn't do those things anyway (at least, not without *way* more skill than the average poster), and not having those (bad) things does not in any way make games samey or boring. It's like you're saying that food is so bland without toxic waste. Really, that hasn't been my experience.

Tanarii
2020-10-12, 07:14 PM
Keep in mind that in some games, it's fairly easy to knock out Creatures.

5e is a good example. All you have to do is have the last hit that's reduces a be a melee attack, and they get knocked unconscious. In other words, capturing them PCs is often a viable alternative to a TPK. Now this is 5e, so if you're tailoring encounters the PCs are extremely unlikely to face a TPK. But if you're running any kind of sandbox, it's definitely possible.

Talakeal
2020-10-12, 09:41 PM
Not at all! This is the epitome of being a team player… at least, if you ask the Determinator. See, it is much easier for the rest of the party to resurrect them than to rescue them. Certainly it requires less precious game time.

That assumes that you are in a high magic / high level adventure, can access the body, and that it is only one person being captured.


In CaS, with the assumption of balanced encounters, one should never surrender.

Why is that? Poor dice rolls or poor tactics can easily get PCs in over their heads in an otherwise balanced encounter.


If that's your players' motivation, find better players.

If the king wants to entrust a "slay the Dragon" quest to Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, well, it's not unlike the GM who wanted to entrust the "slay the good and rightful king" quest to the Paladin. But it is technically within their power to make that claim (and it informs us just how silly the king/GM is, and how poorly things are going to work out for them). OTOH, the claim that a group of 0-level goblins captured Quertus is fairly laughable. When you look at that last statement, you might begin to think, "OK, what *would* it take" or "*why* would that be laughable". From there, it's not a huge leap to realizing that prescripted incarceration takes away from the players' Agency to have their characters' statistics and tactics and choices matter.

Armus, however, was introduced (at 1st level) to the then 7th level party as a prisoner that they "rescued" (really, Armus rescued them, but that's a long story). It worked well (sort of), although most of the party treated Armus like garbage for quite some time. Despite the huge cast of characters that kept being introduced - many as prisoners - I cannot answer to what extent to blame Armus' poor treatment on the PCs, the GM, the level difference, the prisoner status, the "7 levels of fellowship" the party had, or some other components.

However, that's "starting a game". "Starting a session" in the middle of an existing campaign is a completely different beast. That's "the GM played our characters" territory - and there's a rhyme about just how terrible that is. Don't do that. No, not even to accept a job from the king. Feel free to *ask* the players if that makes sense for their characters, and if you can just time skip past that setup to the "this has happened", though.

Narrating downtime is a tricky beast. It is a tough line to walk between taking away player agency and boring them with tedium.

I remember one time, as the players where traveling to a dungeon, I gave the following narrations "As you are making your way down into the ruins, you have to, at one point, climb the ruined wall of an ancient palace. As you do so, (party wizard's) loses his grip and falls, but then the mysterious ring he picked up in the last dungeon glows brightly and he finds himself floating gently to the ground."

Now, I thought it was just a fluffy way to let the player know he had found a ring of feather fall without having to burn an identify spell, but the player was furious that I assumed he would fail a climb check without letting him roll a dice, and the resulting argument was one of the more heated ones in my gaming history.

So yeah, delicate.


I'm not sure how seriously you meant that, but… most of what you said "the GM can't do" is bad, and they shouldn't do those things anyway (at least, not without *way* more skill than the average poster), and not having those (bad) things does not in any way make games samey or boring. It's like you're saying that food is so bland without toxic waste. Really, that hasn't been my experience.

What part are you specifically referring to?

A random assortment of monsters from the monster manual will produce several enemies that have resistances or immunities to common attacks, inflict long term status ailments, or have the ability to damage or destroy equipment.

Likewise, I have had tons of adventures, both as a PC and an DM, that involved being undercover and not attracting attention to themselves, traveling to a region with unusual conditions, or where an adventure breaks out at a party or other affair where the PCs won't have all their gear with them, and I have never heard anyone complain about it. What exactly is the problem here?

zinycor
2020-10-14, 08:39 PM
I am of the firm belief that on RPGs you can do absolutely anything.... as long as you have consent and buy in from the table.

You can absolutely run a game where the PCs act under mind control of a villain, as long as you convince the players that this will be cool. Otherwise... yeah... It will be a hard that players just accept that.

Quertus
2020-10-15, 01:42 PM
That assumes that you are in a high magic / high level adventure, can access the body, and that it is only one person being captured.

While my response was largely predicated on 3e (darn Playgrounder fallacy), there are many considerations here.

In 3e, this would be True Resurrection, which does not require a body. Clocking in at around 6k, it is theoretically individually within reach at 5th, let alone what you can do by pooling party funds. So not really a "high level" thing. High magic, yes.

Access to the body is not required for True Resurrection. But if you wanted to go the cheapskate route and deal with different PCs being at different levels… most foes who would *take prisoners* would leave a body behind (unlike oozes, animals/dinosaurs, etc). Same thing regarding the disposition of the body probably holds true in most other systems, should their resurrection methods require a body.

Lastly, the more people who would be captured, the more important it is to die instead, so as not to inconvenience your teammates. Imagine being the last man standing, tasked with rescuing the entire rest of the party! You'd best have some *incredible* stealth and a dozen handy barrels if you want *that* story to ring true. :smallamused:


Why is that? Poor dice rolls or poor tactics can easily get PCs in over their heads in an otherwise balanced encounter.

Touché. I meant more "shouldn't be prepared to" than "shouldn't" - you should have seen the looks on the CaS group's faces when, upon being introduced to the monster, my character ran away!


Narrating downtime is a tricky beast. It is a tough line to walk between taking away player agency and boring them with tedium.

I remember one time, as the players where traveling to a dungeon, I gave the following narrations "As you are making your way down into the ruins, you have to, at one point, climb the ruined wall of an ancient palace. As you do so, (party wizard's) loses his grip and falls, but then the mysterious ring he picked up in the last dungeon glows brightly and he finds himself floating gently to the ground."

Now, I thought it was just a fluffy way to let the player know he had found a ring of feather fall without having to burn an identify spell, but the player was furious that I assumed he would fail a climb check without letting him roll a dice, and the resulting argument was one of the more heated ones in my gaming history.

So yeah, delicate.

:smalleek: well OK then.

Much like the conversation below, I think that the *safe* place to start is "don't take any actions for the PCs". The Wizard might have been all about Spider Climb, or rope harnesses, or sleds, making this an unreasonable thing for their character to do. Then there's the principle of the thing, having the character fail a roll without even rolling.

However, from the way you worded it, it sounds like they were probably most upset that you chose to railroad information to them by making him look incompetent. Just choosing to have them fail whenever you want, because that's the story you want to tell, seems a principle worth defending.

Still not sure why it would be such a heated argument, unless the other players teased him about it or something.


What part are you specifically referring to?

A random assortment of monsters from the monster manual will produce several enemies that have resistances or immunities to common attacks, inflict long term status ailments, or have the ability to damage or destroy equipment.

Likewise, I have had tons of adventures, both as a PC and an DM, that involved being undercover and not attracting attention to themselves, traveling to a region with unusual conditions, or where an adventure breaks out at a party or other affair where the PCs won't have all their gear with them, and I have never heard anyone complain about it. What exactly is the problem here?

Well, it's complicated. And it's like recursion: to understand recursion, first, you must understand recursion. More directly, it's much easier for you to see it than for me to explain it.

So, don't think about doing things right. Think about all the internet horror stories you've read (and lived through!).

If you try to categorize all the things that the GMs did wrong in those stories, I think you'll see that a lot of the things on your list are present on the list of "GM horror story errors".

Can they be done right? Sure. But they're actions that should carry warning labels - probably the ilk, "do not attempt without player buy-in" and/or "until xyz statement/conversation makes sense to you, *don't do this*".

Thus, I think that "best practices" is for most of those things to default to "off limits" for the GM, until they level up their skills and/or their group.

Tawmis
2020-10-15, 04:24 PM
Know your players.

Let me start by saying I homebrew DM 99% of the time - but when 5th Edition first came out, I picked up Horde of the Dragon Queen and had players that were pretty much, fairly new to D&D in general. When I read Horde of the Dragon Queen I actually really enjoyed the story - and thought, this would be a great module to run them through. Because I got blinded by how cool I thought the story was. It became apparent, very quickly - in worrying only about the potential story - I lost sight of my players typical tactics. Horde requires a lot of stealth, pretending to be cultists, etc., - that was not my group. They were the kick down the door and ask questions later. So when they got to the flying castle, through sheer luck, and me being easy on them - they'd roused several cultists suspicions because of how they were acting, questions they were asking, etc., and soon began killing cultists. I realized, if I were to play this true, they would have been caught - because there's nowhere to run on a flying castle. So it's a great story, but not a great adventure for the party I was DMing for.

I am in two separate sessions of Out of the Abyss as a player, and both DM's informed me, I'd be starting off as a prisoner, and the first part would be breaking out. Yes, it was slow, though both DMs were VERY different in their approach - but eventually the jail break happened. So knowing up front, it was a "You're a prisoner" scenario helped set my expectations.

zinycor
2020-10-15, 06:08 PM
So, one thing to keep in mind. Being mind controlled or taken prisoner are usually long term fail-states. Meaning that once you are under these conditions you have play that, maybe for multiple sessions. That can be a lot to ask for some players.


When we compare that to death... well, if your character dies you get to play anothr character, that might be a better solution.

Nightcanon
2020-10-16, 10:27 AM
D&D is absolutely the wrong system to be playing the 'you get captured, and have to breakout of capitivity' game with, with the possible exception of using this as a starting point of a campaign. As others have pointed out, imprisoning martial classes means taking all their stuff off them, and they need that stuff to (at least try to) keep up with the magic-using classes in the party. Meanwhile, the clerics and sorcerors just need to get in a good night's sleep and then they can nova their way out, unless doing so is prevented in some way (which completely removes any agency they have). To be honest, anyone capturing a magic-using individual in a standard D&D setting would be foolish not to kill them out of hand, or at least render them incapable of casting in some drastic way- and no one wants that for their character.
The start of campaign exception at least has the rationale that the evil Sheriff's men mistook you for commoners rather than nascent level 1 adventurers, you didn't have any stuff to lose, and presumably when you overpower the guards and escape you'll end up with an expected level of starting equipment (ooh look, a choice of leather armour, chain shirts and breastplate, and an assortment of basic and martial weapons! And a chest containing 5d4*10 gold per PC, too!

Democratus
2020-10-16, 01:36 PM
I think it depends heavily on the version of D&D and the kind of campaign you are playing.

A strongly narrative campaign will do just fine with PCs in captivity. You explore the conditions of your imprisonment, discover others in the same situation with you, begin to try and put together a plan for escape - it's all very fun for a group that is fine with several sessions of RP without smashing something.

Even so, he last long-term capture D&D game I was in had the party getting in brawls with other prisoners who were bullies.This let the martial characters shine.

The few spells that could be cast with no material components compelled the spellcasters to be creative - and to hide what they were doing from others lest some guard or snitch get them in serious trouble.

We spent maybe 4 months (real time) in captivity putting together a coalition of fellow prisoners and a plan for escape. The payoff was fantastic, one of those sessions you talk about for years.

Quertus
2020-10-16, 04:03 PM
The few spells that could be cast with no material components compelled the spellcasters to be creative - We spent maybe 4 months (real time) in captivity

Which casters? Wizards still need their spellbook to memorize new spells; Clerics need holy symbols. Have either of those in the party, and they'll be unable to participate.

For four months.

zinycor
2020-10-16, 04:49 PM
Which casters? Clerics need holy symbols.

Unless the spell doesn't require material component or you have the specific material component at hand.

icefractal
2020-10-16, 06:07 PM
To be honest, anyone capturing a magic-using individual in a standard D&D setting would be foolish not to kill them out of hand, or at least render them incapable of casting in some drastic way- and no one wants that for their character.This one's not actually that hard - to achieve the equivalent of taking away weapons, at least.

Mittens. Rigid mittens where the four fingers have to bend simultaneously (as you usually would in mittens, but enforced) and don't have freedom to wiggle sideways. Not that uncomfortable, and while it makes the prisoners clumsy it's not as bad as being manacled.

Now yes, there are spells without somatic components, but there are also people with improved unarmed strike and Stone Dragon maneuvers who can smash their way through the cell bars bare-handed. A "normal" prison is set up to hold prisoners who are mostly low-level and normal-ish people.

If you do want to hold high-threat people, the best way is for them to be asleep or in stasis. Maybe a custom version of Sepia Snake Sigil where they still dream, and some kind of dream-magic if you want to talk to them while they're there. Or if you just want them out of commission, Sequester has you covered.

Tanarii
2020-10-16, 11:53 PM
Which casters? Wizards still need their spellbook to memorize new spells; Clerics need holy symbols. Have either of those in the party, and they'll be unable to participate.

Not in 5e. Lots of cantrips, spells that can be cast all day long and do damage on par with weapons, do not require a focus or Material components.

Of course, once you point out that most of them can't target objects at least "I acid splash the lock until it breaks" isn't a thing.



Mittens. Rigid mittens where the four fingers have to bend simultaneously (as you usually would in mittens, but enforced) and don't have freedom to wiggle sideways. Not that uncomfortable, and while it makes the prisoners clumsy it's not as bad as being manacled. You'd need a DM ruling that this means it doesn't constitute a "free hand" in 5e.

icefractal
2020-10-16, 11:58 PM
You'd need a DM ruling that this means it doesn't constitute a "free hand" in 5e.True, I'm talking 3E; it's always going to vary by edition though. In 4E, for example, hardness isn't a thing, so any normal wall can be broken through in a few minutes of work.

Tanarii
2020-10-17, 12:15 AM
True, I'm talking 3E; it's always going to vary by edition though. In 4E, for example, hardness isn't a thing, so any normal wall can be broken through in a few minutes of work.
Definitely. My first quote was in response to a response to Democratus, who had started off his point with it varying by edition, only to have it countered with a edition specific assumption.

It's a lot simpler in a game where having manacles on (or some superior equivalent) is sufficient to stop spellcasting as well as fighting. Or at least severely impede it.

Pex
2020-10-17, 09:28 AM
Definitely. My first quote was in response to a response to Democratus, who had started off his point with it varying by edition, only to have it countered with a edition specific assumption.

It's a lot simpler in a game where having manacles on (or some superior equivalent) is sufficient to stop spellcasting as well as fighting. Or at least severely impede it.

Psionics

:smallbiggrin:

Quertus
2020-10-17, 10:04 AM
I think it depends heavily on the version of D&D


Which casters? Wizards still need their spellbook to memorize new spells; Clerics need holy symbols. Have either of those in the party, and they'll be unable to participate.


Not in 5e. Lots of cantrips, spells that can be cast all day long and do damage on par with weapons, do not require a focus or Material components.


Definitely. My first quote was in response to a response to Democratus, who had started off his point with it varying by edition, only to have it countered with a edition specific assumption.

Well. I guess they changed more in 5e than I was aware of. :smallredface:

(technically not an "edition-specific assumption", as *every* edition my senile mind is still familiar with works that way, but point taken)

Also, I misread, and thought that those comments were connected to the "play style" condition, not the "edition" part of the statement.

On the plus side, I learned something today. :smallbiggrin:

Talakeal
2020-10-17, 10:08 AM
So I had a talk about this with one of my players, and he thinks it isn't about control or about ego, but about paranoia.

Players seem legitimately convinced that killer DMs lurk around every corner, and he said that he always views an offer to surrender as a "trick", and that he expects the enemy to simply disarm and then execute his PC without a fight, so he will never surrender.

To me, this blows my mind.

OOC, the DM doesn't want to end the game or kill your characters, and they are going to provide you with an out, likely some form of adventure hook.

In character, someone who executes captures foes will quickly earn a reputation which puts them in danger, their own men won't be shown mercy when captured, and enemies will fight to the death, potentially taking you or your men out with them in a blaze of glory.

Second, taking captives is practical.

I looked it, and historically it appears that in the ancient world most prisoners were made slaves, in the middle ages they were sold for ransom, and in the modern world they were exchanged for prisoners on the other side once the war was over. All of which are practical reasons not to kill a prisoner.


The exceptions are rare, but some cultures don't take prisoners (and are well known for it), or the process of taking prisoners breaks down in the face of a genocide or a really long war.

AFAICT, there are generally only three reasons to execute a prisoner:

1: You need bodies for a sacrifice or other religious purpose.
2: You are torturing someone for information.
3: They have really angered you or their people and wanting to make suffer to send a message.


Now, if you are surrendering to lawful authorities, they aren't going to execute you unless you are found guilty of a capital crime; and even if you are arrested for such, you still get a trial, which, imo, you are much likely to get an innocent verdict from than you are to survive a losing battle with the police and then manage to actually escape with your freedom, and even if you do, you will have a price on your head for as long as you continue to run. Rare circumstances where violence is actually the logical in character choice imho.


D&D is absolutely the wrong system to be playing the 'you get captured, and have to breakout of capitivity' game with, with the possible exception of using this as a starting point of a campaign. As others have pointed out, imprisoning martial classes means taking all their stuff off them, and they need that stuff to (at least try to) keep up with the magic-using classes in the party. Meanwhile, the clerics and sorcerors just need to get in a good night's sleep and then they can nova their way out, unless doing so is prevented in some way (which completely removes any agency they have). To be honest, anyone capturing a magic-using individual in a standard D&D setting would be foolish not to kill them out of hand, or at least render them incapable of casting in some drastic way- and no one wants that for their character.

It depends on the edition, the system, and the characters involved.

For the record, I rarely play D&D, and haven't played 3E in years.

But I don't think you can make a blanket statement about power / equipment dependency. I wizard without their spell book or a cleric without their holy symbol is hurt a lot, a monk, not so much.


In 3e, this would be True Resurrection, which does not require a body. Clocking in at around 6k, it is theoretically individually within reach at 5th, let alone what you can do by pooling party funds. So not really a "high level" thing. High magic, yes.

You are off by about 5k, the component is 10k worth of diamonds.

But that still requires tracking down a 17+ level cleric willing to cast the spell for you, which in most campaign worlds isn't exactly common. In Eberron and Dragonlance, for example, there is explicitly nobody in the world who can do that. And then once you find him, you still have to talk him into casting the spell.

And while it is possible to scrape together that sort of money at low-mid levels, I can't imagine it actually being the optimal choice.



Access to the body is not required for True Resurrection. But if you wanted to go the cheapskate route and deal with different PCs being at different levels… most foes who would *take prisoners* would leave a body behind (unlike oozes, animals/dinosaurs, etc). Same thing regarding the disposition of the body probably holds true in most other systems, should their resurrection methods require a body.

That assumes they just leave the bodies lying around. There is a good chance that humanoid enemies will either return them to their base and / or cremate them, at which point corpse recovery is no easier than rescuing a prisoner.



Much like the conversation below, I think that the *safe* place to start is "don't take any actions for the PCs". The Wizard might have been all about Spider Climb, or rope harnesses, or sleds, making this an unreasonable thing for their character to do. Then there's the principle of the thing, having the character fail a roll without even rolling.

However, from the way you worded it, it sounds like they were probably most upset that you chose to railroad information to them by making him look incompetent. Just choosing to have them fail whenever you want, because that's the story you want to tell, seems a principle worth defending.

Still not sure why it would be such a heated argument, unless the other players teased him about it or something.

As usual, I think this is mostly just about pride / control.

DMs handwave trivial things all the time, and the players don't actually want to roll for every little thing.

BUT, if you tell them they fail without a roll, they get mad.

Which is weird to me. As you said, it feels like railroading by declaring they can fail whenever they want, but I see it as inserting narrative where it fits the fiction. For example, if the DC to climb a wall is 15, and the mage had a +9 modifier, he will fail to climb a wall 1/5 times. It is tedious to just say "Over the course of the trip, you climb 17 walls, give me 17 rolls," Instead I will simply say "You climb successfully about 80% of the time, on one of the times when you do X interesting thing happens."

Do you really think assuming statistically probable results during "down time" or glossed over travel sequences is railroading? Or that the game would somehow be improved by making people roll for common occurrences without a real cost for failure?

Honestly, I think it stems from the same place that a lot of criticism of fumble rules come from, players come to RPGs for an ego boost, and really don't like the embarrassment and perceived vulnerability that comes from their character failing at something, even if it is perfectly reasonable and realistic within the rules / fiction.

Oh, and as a side note, yes, I agree it would be bad form if the player had made alternative arrangements to avoid climbing entirely, but that isn't what happened. I place that into the same category as giving a paladin a quest to assassinate the kind or a blackguard a quest to protect the orphanage.



Well, it's complicated. And it's like recursion: to understand recursion, first, you must understand recursion. More directly, it's much easier for you to see it than for me to explain it.

So, don't think about doing things right. Think about all the internet horror stories you've read (and lived through!).

If you try to categorize all the things that the GMs did wrong in those stories, I think you'll see that a lot of the things on your list are present on the list of "GM horror story errors".

Can they be done right? Sure. But they're actions that should carry warning labels - probably the ilk, "do not attempt without player buy-in" and/or "until xyz statement/conversation makes sense to you, *don't do this*".

Thus, I think that "best practices" is for most of those things to default to "off limits" for the GM, until they level up their skills and/or their group.

Maybe when dealing with brand new players, but that isn't the case. I have played a lot of games with a lot of years, and with a lot of people. I have also had a lot of bad experiences. But I don't think I have ever seen a situation where some sort of scenario condition that added difficulty actually caused one of them. In my experience things like that are almost always enjoyable breaks from monotony.

Sure, people grumble whenever they struggle or if they feel that a scenario is specifically unfair to them, but no more so than when they have a bad roll or any of the other minor difficulties of the session, and I have certainly never seen it ruin a session for anyone.

zinycor
2020-10-17, 10:51 AM
Good to know I took the time to answer the post only to get ignored.

Tanarii
2020-10-17, 11:05 AM
Well. I guess they changed more in 5e than I was aware of. :smallredface:

(technically not an "edition-specific assumption", as *every* edition my senile mind is still familiar with works that way, but point taken)

Also, I misread, and thought that those comments were connected to the "play style" condition, not the "edition" part of the statement.

On the plus side, I learned something today. :smallbiggrin:
Pretty sure 4e too, but I'd have to go look it up.

3e of course had the infamous so many spells, so few that can be cast while grappled. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0830.html) Different beast.

denthor
2020-10-17, 12:33 PM
I just had a conversation with my brother about starting a family RPG group since my regular group is on definite hiatus due to quarantine. His response was that he doesn't want to game with me again because of an incident that happened nearly 20 years ago.

Essentially, it was his first time DMing, and his adventure hook involved an NPC with a hypnotic gaze mind controlling the players into going on a quest for him, and I had my character blind herself rather than be subject to his mind control, essentially ruining both his plot and my character, and thus the campaign came to quick end.

But, thinking back, its not an isolated incident. I have had numerous games where the DM railroaded the PCs into being captured as an adventure hook, and I took extreme measures to resist or escape and derailed / got kicked out of the campaign.

On the opposite side of the screen, anytime I have ever tried to run a "jailbreak" type scenario, the players protest most strongly and will rather go down in a blaze or glory and suffer a TPK rather than surrender or allow themselves to be taken prisoner, and I have long since given up even trying.

Likewise, I remember a common complaint on the old White Wolf forums being about the "Iron Will" merit (which makes you more or less immune to mind control) because without the ability to mind control the PCs, how could the Game Master ever ensure that they would go along with the plot?

Likewise, I have seen some people complaining that the Descent into Avernus module starts with the PCs being drafted by the Flaming Fist under the threat of death, and I can't imagine that actually going over well with anybody.

So, my question is, why do so many DMs, especially new DMs, need to strong arm players into going along with their adventures?

Likewise, why are players so utterly afraid of allowing themselves to be captured and taken prisoner?

Is there any right way to run a jailbreak / slave revolt scenario?


Yes 1st level they start there.

If higher level kill them overwhelming force. Then have them brought back to life full everything other than equipment.


When I say overwhelming force I mean 9th level meteor swarm on a 2nd level party. Or let them have tpk then bring back to life. Tell them in advance maybe they go along with it. Do you want the battle or just restart where I want to place you.

There is a major misconception that all battles are winnable in D&D. Tell them up front some are not.

Otherwise do not bother.

NigelWalmsley
2020-10-17, 01:27 PM
I mean I was able to recognize it as terrible as a teen in the late 80s. But so we're pretty much all the 80s and 90s sit coms.

I mean, in fairness, so are many of the 00s and 10s sitcoms. Two and a Half Men or Two Broke Girls aren't exactly breaking the bank for quality.

Telok
2020-10-17, 02:02 PM
Players seem legitimately convinced that killer DMs lurk around every corner, and he said that he always views an offer to surrender as a "trick", and that he expects the enemy to simply disarm and then execute his PC without a fight, so he will never surrender....

Do you really think assuming statistically probable results during "down time" or glossed over travel sequences is railroading?

On the first point, it comes from player experience. It can be from an inexperienced DM, a bad DM, or a DM who extrapolates the behavior from a monster entry. I've always liked monster society/ecology blurbs becaise that can give hints and ideas to make stuff more than just a thoughtless fight-to-the-death stat block. They often, way long ago, included mentions of prisoners and slaves along side the combatant/non-combatant ratios and how many of a given group might be armed differently from the base stat block. Those are out of style now because additional, optional information is claimed to reduce the DMs ability to use stuff. The effect I actually saw was new DMs doing things like making all orcs always armed only with great axes, always fight to the death, and never taking prisoners unless a module specifically told them to (which is usually a scripted "taken prisoner" thing with a fig leaf of an impossible combat anyways).

On the second point we run into weirdness. If you're using the rules as a model for the character's reality then you want to be sure those statistics don't result in nonsense and sillyness a statistically significant portion of the time (the ranger's animal companion having an 8% chance to beat a 10th level genius wizard chess master at chess). On the other hand if the dice, rolls, and numbers don't somehow reflect reality then you're narrating stuff with occasional rolls at DM determined "narratively important" points, and then you absolutely do risk railroading the player's decisions into irrelevance. Any time the DM decides that the character's abilities aren't relevant, or the player's decisions aren't relevant, or that no result of the dice can alter things, then you are railroading in some form.

Being told "You fail 1 in 6 climb/swim/something checks on today's journey, lose X resources." sounds fine at first glance. But when there's levitation, climbing gear, flying familiars to carry rope, and a difference between actual teamwork versus everyone going it alone, then you're ignoring character abilities and player choices in favor of your predetermined narrative. It (generally almost always) annoys the players. Many players then start to alter their behavior to try to have more control over their characters. That often results in character vs. plot and player vs. DM/narrative problems. Then, when you get to the prisoner issues, you have the problems mentioned in this thread.

I made mistakes when I was inexperienced at DMing. Even though I recognize when novice DMs are making those mistakes it still grates on me when my character sheet and my decisions don't matter. It also grates on me that so many of the "professional" DM advice or how-to books can't seem to address what's probably one of the top ten issues that hurt new DMs.

Pex
2020-10-17, 02:10 PM
So I had a talk about this with one of my players, and he thinks it isn't about control or about ego, but about paranoia.

Players seem legitimately convinced that killer DMs lurk around every corner, and he said that he always views an offer to surrender as a "trick", and that he expects the enemy to simply disarm and then execute his PC without a fight, so he will never surrender.

To me, this blows my mind.



I understand his point of view perfectly.

Talakeal
2020-10-17, 02:19 PM
On the second point we run into weirdness. If you're using the rules as a model for the character's reality then you want to be sure those statistics don't result in nonsense and sillyness a statistically significant portion of the time (the ranger's animal companion having an 8% chance to beat a 10th level genius wizard chess master at chess). On the other hand if the dice, rolls, and numbers don't somehow reflect reality then you're narrating stuff with occasional rolls at DM determined "narratively important" points, and then you absolutely do risk railroading the player's decisions into irrelevance. Any time the DM decides that the character's abilities aren't relevant, or the player's decisions aren't relevant, or that no result of the dice can alter things, then you are railroading in some form.

Being told "You fail 1 in 6 climb/swim/something checks on today's journey, lose X resources." sounds fine at first glance. But when there's levitation, climbing gear, flying familiars to carry rope, and a difference between actual teamwork versus everyone going it alone, then you're ignoring character abilities and player choices in favor of your predetermined narrative. It (generally almost always) annoys the players. Many players then start to alter their behavior to try to have more control over their characters. That often results in character vs. plot and player vs. DM/narrative problems. Then, when you get to the prisoner issues, you have the problems mentioned in this thread.

Out of curiosity, what would you say is the best practice here?

To simply roll for everything? To assume that players always succeed at everything they do when it isn't of dramatic import?

Do note that in the situation I was describing, there was no "lose X resources," the cost for "failure" was free identification of a magic item.

NigelWalmsley
2020-10-17, 02:48 PM
On the first point, it comes from player experience.

Also it comes from "to the death" combat being the default in most games. If you're playing WoW or DotA or whatever, there's not really the option to peacefully surrender to fight another day. And even D&D doesn't really normalize it. If your experience is that surrender is mostly impossible or pointless, you're going to be skeptical of opportunities to surrender.


Being told "You fail 1 in 6 climb/swim/something checks on today's journey, lose X resources." sounds fine at first glance. But when there's levitation, climbing gear, flying familiars to carry rope, and a difference between actual teamwork versus everyone going it alone, then you're ignoring character abilities and player choices in favor of your predetermined narrative. It (generally almost always) annoys the players. Many players then start to alter their behavior to try to have more control over their characters.

It should be noted that this applies to a lot more than just travel. In general, if you have multiple systems for resolving something, it is very important that those systems produce results that are as similar as possible. Otherwise you get players meta-gaming in really obnoxious ways to try to use the most favorable system. Maybe that's declaring that they are going to roleplay every day of downtime at combat encounter levels of resolution, because that lets them pump out more magic. Maybe it's trying to use the mass combat rules for their fight with six bandits because those rules are more favorable to them. Of course, this is as much a system problem as a DM problem, but it's a real problem nonetheless.


I made mistakes when I was inexperienced at DMing. Even though I recognize when novice DMs are making those mistakes it still grates on me when my character sheet and my decisions don't matter. It also grates on me that so many of the "professional" DM advice or how-to books can't seem to address what's probably one of the top ten issues that hurt new DMs.

It doesn't help that a lot of the time the system does a really bad job of explaining how to make people's abilities matter. A lot of the time games will just say "here's some stuff magic/equipment/whatever can do, figure it out". That makes it very easy for novice DMs to fall into the trap of either designing encounters that players can ignore with the abilities written on their character sheets, or insisting that character abilities arbitrarily don't work.


Out of curiosity, what would you say is the best practice here?.

The best practice would be for abilities to cleanly apply up a level of abstraction. So if you have a tactical Flight power, that should come with bonuses for various things you could do with Flight on other scales.

Talakeal
2020-10-17, 03:05 PM
The best practice would be for abilities to cleanly apply up a level of abstraction. So if you have a tactical Flight power, that should come with bonuses for various things you could do with Flight on other scales.

Ok, but I was never talking about ignoring abilities, merely failure rates for skill tests which are made "off camera".

Quertus
2020-10-17, 04:20 PM
Good to know I took the time to answer the post only to get ignored.

If you meant this:



Unless the spell doesn't require material component or you have the specific material component at hand.

… then I don't think it's terribly applicable. *Are* there any Cleric spells in editions that pretty much always require Clerics to have holy symbols… that don't require a holy symbol as a component? The only one I can think is "Create Holy Symbol" (which… kinda makes the Cleric much more viable, actually).


So I had a talk about this with one of my players, and he thinks it isn't about control or about ego, but about paranoia.

Players seem legitimately convinced that killer DMs lurk around every corner, and he said that he always views an offer to surrender as a "trick", and that he expects the enemy to simply disarm and then execute his PC without a fight, so he will never surrender.

To me, this blows my mind.

:smalleek:

I mean, I've *seen* it, but someone suggesting that as "the reason" certainly is surprising.


OOC, the DM doesn't want to end the game or kill your characters, and they are going to provide you with an out, likely some form of adventure hook.

That's not a given. Some GMs really *do* want to kill your character. And I certainly don't want to run under one whose standard modus operandi is unrealistic contrivance.


In character, someone who executes captures foes will quickly earn a reputation which puts them in danger, their own men won't be shown mercy when captured, and enemies will fight to the death, potentially taking you or your men out with them in a blaze of glory.

Who would know? (Ignoring 3e Bardic Knowledge answer of "everyone around the world")


Second, taking captives is practical.

I looked it, and historically it appears that in the ancient world most prisoners were made slaves, in the middle ages they were sold for ransom, and in the modern world they were exchanged for prisoners on the other side once the war was over. All of which are practical reasons not to kill a prisoner.


The exceptions are rare, but some cultures don't take prisoners (and are well known for it), or the process of taking prisoners breaks down in the face of a genocide or a really long war.

AFAICT, there are generally only three reasons to execute a prisoner:

1: You need bodies for a sacrifice or other religious purpose.
2: You are torturing someone for information.
3: They have really angered you or their people and wanting to make suffer to send a message.

There's a lot more reasons, including "you've proven yourself more trouble than you're worth" and "the enemy hit or supply lines (and you are expendable / look tasty)".


Now, if you are surrendering to lawful authorities, they aren't going to execute you unless you are found guilty of a capital crime; and even if you are arrested for such, you still get a trial, which, imo, you are much likely to get an innocent verdict from than you are to survive a losing battle with the police and then manage to actually escape with your freedom, and even if you do, you will have a price on your head for as long as you continue to run. Rare circumstances where violence is actually the logical in character choice imho.

But, OOC, why would you expect that the GM and the group would put up with dealing with such a scenario?

You've either broken the cardinal rule of "don't split the party", and become The Load, or its a "soft" TPK, or it's a railroad.

Which one of those is supposed to be the "good answer" compared to "indomitable will, CaS optimism, went down swinging"?

Also, some GMs fudge rolls - maybe they were expecting luck (or "luck") to carry them through.


You are off by about 5k, the component is 10k worth of diamonds.

Or it's 25k worth of diamonds, depending on who looks up what when.

Yeah, I'm used to ignoring components (Tainted Sorcerer, Ignore Material Components, etc), so it's not surprising that I'd misremember it by a factor of "XP to GP conversation rate".


But that still requires tracking down a 17+ level cleric willing to cast the spell for you,

Or a 9th level Ur-Priest, or a Tainted Sorcerer Arcane Spellcaster, or…


which in most campaign worlds isn't exactly common.

Of course, if your *last* party in that world had several…


In Eberron and Dragonlance, for example, there is explicitly nobody in the world who can do that. And then once you find him, you still have to talk him into casting the spell.

… does Eberon have Ur-Priest as an option?


And while it is possible to scrape together that sort of money at low-mid levels, I can't imagine it actually being the optimal choice.

Perhaps not. But my parties usually *already* have the scroll on hand, so…


That assumes they just leave the bodies lying around. There is a good chance that humanoid enemies will either return them to their base and / or cremate them, at which point corpse recovery is no easier than rescuing a prisoner.

Really? I thought, historically, most battlefields were either "bury them" or "leave them for the birds". I've certainly never seen victorious PCs take enemy corpses back to base (outside of animation and experimentation purposes).


As usual, I think this is mostly just about pride / control.

DMs handwave trivial things all the time, and the players don't actually want to roll for every little thing.

BUT, if you tell them they fail without a roll, they get mad.

Which is weird to me. As you said, it feels like railroading by declaring they can fail whenever they want, but I see it as inserting narrative where it fits the fiction. For example, if the DC to climb a wall is 15, and the mage had a +9 modifier, he will fail to climb a wall 1/5 times. It is tedious to just say "Over the course of the trip, you climb 17 walls, give me 17 rolls," Instead I will simply say "You climb successfully about 80% of the time, on one of the times when you do X interesting thing happens."

Do you really think assuming statistically probable results during "down time" or glossed over travel sequences is railroading? Or that the game would somehow be improved by making people roll for common occurrences without a real cost for failure?

Do I? Not… exactly.

I *hate* Batman as a superhero because he's unrealistic. All those bullets flying around, he really should have caught more fire. And be dead.

The one time he did die, it was for story purposes.

Things done "because it makes a good story" make an unpalatable story.

So, it depends how it comes off. Your first statement, about, "you fall, so you learn something"? That was "for the story" logic. Your second statement about "over x attempts, you fail Y of them"? That's game physics logic.

But *both* are "horrible" (to some), because, in both cases, you are picking on one player, making their character look incompetent by focusing on their failures. Also, *both* are horrible, because you're glossing over double-digit damaging falls. If the PCs are taking double-digit damaging falls during downtime, something's probably wrong.

So, sure, it could be done right, but I can see players being thin-skinned enough to be triggered by the words you used in your posts.


Honestly, I think it stems from the same place that a lot of criticism of fumble rules come from, players come to RPGs for an ego boost, and really don't like the embarrassment and perceived vulnerability that comes from their character failing at something, even if it is perfectly reasonable and realistic within the rules / fiction.

I won't deny either of those components: "RPG as ego boost" and "embarrassment" / "made to look pants on head stupid" are very much things one should consider when evaluating approaches in an RPG.

However, critical fumbles are problematic for much more than just those reasons. "Skill makes you fumble more" is just one of the more prominent results of bad implementations; even "good" implementations often have "slow death spiral" and the like.


Oh, and as a side note, yes, I agree it would be bad form if the player had made alternative arrangements to avoid climbing entirely, but that isn't what happened. I place that into the same category as giving a paladin a quest to assassinate the kind

Fair.


or a blackguard a quest to protect the orphanage.

Hey, he used to be a Paladin, and might be an orphan! That's a completely different category than the other two.


Maybe when dealing with brand new players, but that isn't the case. I have played a lot of games with a lot of years, and with a lot of people. I have also had a lot of bad experiences. But I don't think I have ever seen a situation where some sort of scenario condition that added difficulty actually caused one of them. In my experience things like that are almost always enjoyable breaks from monotony.

"Low wealth" 3e? (Someone with less senility / who else better on History:Talakeal will have to field one closer to home)


Sure, people grumble whenever they struggle or if they feel that a scenario is specifically unfair to them, but no more so than when they have a bad roll or any of the other minor difficulties of the session, and I have certainly never seen it ruin a session for anyone.

Fairy tale Ogre (ie, foe who *seems* tailored specifically to shut down their character)?

Telok
2020-10-17, 05:14 PM
Out of curiosity, what would you say is the best practice here?

To simply roll for everything? To assume that players always succeed at everything they do when it isn't of dramatic import?

Do note that in the situation I was describing, there was no "lose X resources," the cost for "failure" was free identification of a magic item.

Honestly I think it depends on the game, the mechanics, and the play style. In some games failing to accurately identify a magic item with your own abilities absolutely can drain significant resources or kill characters.

In a comedy game having characters randomly succeed or fail anything may be appropriate. If it's a silver age supers game the genius with "doctor, 16 or less on 3d6" on the character sheet probably shouldn't have to roll for anything medical short of setting broken bones with one hand while sword fighting three Martian invaders with the other hand.

The mechanics matter too. If you've got a flat die roll that always fails at least 5% of the time maybe your heroes shouldn't roll for things that normal people succeed at every day. If it's a dice pool where standard tasks have a 1 in a million failure rate maybe rolling for that extremely rare total brain fart is warranted.

How you describe things can matter. If you say it's a "drive the wagon to the next town" check and declare the roads are good, weather is nice, no bandits, healthy oxen pulling, and a new wagon. Well then a 1/6 failure per 4 hours seems silly. If you roll first and then say the roads are just mud tracks, or that all you oxen died of old age in the first mile... Well, post hoc excuses work, but it may annoy the players.

I can't give a general answer to "what should I roll for" that covers the top 20 systems, 10 genera, and 5+ common styles. I think we mostly have the experience that removing a player's agency over their character, and ignoring what the characters should be capable of, causes problems that usually seem to get described as railroading and related issues.

Mr Beer
2020-10-17, 07:14 PM
I mean, in fairness, so are many of the 00s and 10s sitcoms. Two and a Half Men or Two Broke Girls aren't exactly breaking the bank for quality.

Blonde: something something dating.

Brunette: something something...anal!

Audience: WOOO!!!!!!!!!!! hahaha ahhahahahha HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!

Gold standard comedy.

Pex
2020-10-17, 11:32 PM
Out of curiosity, what would you say is the best practice here?

To simply roll for everything? To assume that players always succeed at everything they do when it isn't of dramatic import?

Do note that in the situation I was describing, there was no "lose X resources," the cost for "failure" was free identification of a magic item.

Don't make it difficult for players to identify magic items on their own. Let them know the Identify spell. Let them have the spell components. Let there be game time the players can afford the spell slot in a reasonable amount of time after acquiring magic items. Don't arbitrarily make PCs look foolish.

Talakeal
2020-10-18, 09:20 AM
Don't make it difficult for players to identify magic items on their own. Let them know the Identify spell. Let them have the spell components. Let there be game time the players can afford the spell slot in a reasonable amount of time after acquiring magic items.

The players could have purchased the scroll and the components in town, sure, but they chose not to, and at the point where it happened they were exploring some ruins (which happened to have a lot of verticality due to the city was originally built onto a mountainside before sliding into a sinkhole) deep in the wilderness. I thought I was throwing them a bone doing something that fit with in game logic. IMO somehow forcing them to take the identify spell or just throwing it in their path would have been far more along the railroad / controlling DM access.


Don't arbitrarily make PCs look foolish.

Again, failing the occasional test does not, imo, make the PCs look foolish, it makes them look human. Even the best of us fails occasionally.

This goes back to my initial premise, that fear of failure is really more about pride than railroading.


How you describe things can matter. If you say it's a "drive the wagon to the next town" check and declare the roads are good, weather is nice, no bandits, healthy oxen pulling, and a new wagon. Well then a 1/6 failure per 4 hours seems silly. If you roll first and then say the roads are just mud tracks, or that all you oxen died of old age in the first mile... Well, post hoc excuses work, but it may annoy the players.

Agreed, but setting an appropriate DC is not the issue here.

Although, iirc, the actual incident I was describing did have a huge amount of the player rules lawyering / grubbing for bonuses trying to wheedle the difficulty of the task down as low as possible.


I can't give a general answer to "what should I roll for" that covers the top 20 systems, 10 genera, and 5+ common styles. I think we mostly have the experience that removing a player's agency over their character, and ignoring what the characters should be capable of, causes problems that usually seem to get described as railroading and related issues.

The thing is, those are two separate issues. If a guy is really good, handwaving the situation and saying they pass is still robbing them of agency (or at least, a chance to roll the dice) but it doesn't hurt ego. Likewise, saying someone who is really bad has no chance of doing something really hard is the same, but does hurt ego. Saying someone who has a 50/50 chance to succeed when rolling dice fails about half the time when off camera is likewise not robbing the player of agency.

Heck, I once had a situation where I was shooting arrows at a landlocked monster while flying, and the DM simply told me to calculate the average damage and hit chance and multiply it by the number of arrows in my quiver because he wasn't going to play out forty rounds of me rolling by myself while the rest of the group watched bored, and I think that was absolutely the right call as expediency is a lot more important than the illusion of agency the dice give in that case.


Fairy tale Ogre (ie, foe who *seems* tailored specifically to shut down their character)?

Again, what are we discussing here?

I am talking about scenarios where they players can't use all of their abilities for whatever reason (jailbreak, infiltration, environmental conditions, curses, old injuries, etc.)

The "fairy tail ogre" was a situation where the PC lost their mind because I used a custom monster, which was a common trigger in that campaign. It was not a condition of the scenario or something which prohibited him from using all of his toys.

Now, there were several situations in that game where that happened. He was playing a sorcerer who specialized in fire spells, and there was one dungeon (a salamander cave) where the majority of enemies were immune or resistant to fire, a few underwater encounters, and even a dungeon which was located in a dead magic zone. All of these DID force him to put away his shiniest toys, and though there was some minor grumbling (the same as there is when a monster targets him or he flubs a roll) there was no "horror story" or the like.




However, critical fumbles are problematic for much more than just those reasons. "Skill makes you fumble more" is just one of the more prominent results of bad implementations; even "good" implementations often have "slow death spiral" and the like.

Specific implementations might be bad, but there are a lot of people who seem to hate the concept of fumbles, regardless of the implementation, because it makes their character look silly or incompetent.


That's not a given. Some GMs really *do* want to kill your character. And I certainly don't want to run under one whose standard modus operandi is unrealistic contrivance.

Nor would I.

But surrendering when you get in over your head isn't really a contrivance, and, imo, the only unrealistic part is enemies who execute captives for no reason.



Who would know? (Ignoring 3e Bardic Knowledge answer of "everyone around the world")

Obviously it depends greatly on the specifics involved. But I would imagine it would be fairly common knowledge if a society practiced cannibalism, human sacrifice, or killing prisoners to preserve their honor. Although, it would probably get obscured by rumors spread by their enemies to make them look worse.



There's a lot more reasons, including "you've proven yourself more trouble than you're worth" and "the enemy hit or supply lines (and you are expendable / look tasty)"

Agreed, one can come up with any number of justifications, but they are all the exception rather than the rule.



But, OOC, why would you expect that the GM and the group would put up with dealing with such a scenario?

You've either broken the cardinal rule of "don't split the party", and become The Load, or its a "soft" TPK, or it's a railroad.

Which one of those is supposed to be the "good answer" compared to "indomitable will, CaS optimism, went down swinging"?

All of them?

I mean, yeah, if you are just playing an old school hack and slash meatgrinder where your new character shows up at the dungeon ready to go, then I can see that, but I tend to run long character driven campaigns, were most any sort of set back is preferable to having to start over from scratch.


Also, some GMs fudge rolls - maybe they were expecting luck (or "luck") to carry them through.

Not me.



Or a 9th level Ur-Priest, or a Tainted Sorcerer Arcane Spellcaster, or…



Of course, if your *last* party in that world had several…



… does Eberon have Ur-Priest as an option?

Those are all pretty niche things that, afaik, only exist in 3.5, and still require a high level caster who is friendly to the party.

I believe Eberron NPCs cap out around level 12.



Perhaps not. But my parties usually *already* have the scroll on hand, so…

Your low-mid level parties typically carry around a scroll of true resurrection? That's quite a claim.



Really? I thought, historically, most battlefields were either "bury them" or "leave them for the birds". I've certainly never seen victorious PCs take enemy corpses back to base (outside of animation and experimentation purposes).

Battlefields probably not, although cremation wouldn't be uncommon.

But PCs are rarely involved in actual battles, more likely they are caught by patrols while sneaking around or something, in which case I would think bringing the bodies back would be standard practice, especially in civilized lands.



Do I? Not… exactly.

I *hate* Batman as a superhero because he's unrealistic. All those bullets flying around, he really should have caught more fire. And be dead.

The one time he did die, it was for story purposes.

Things done "because it makes a good story" make an unpalatable story.

So, it depends how it comes off. Your first statement, about, "you fall, so you learn something"? That was "for the story" logic. Your second statement about "over x attempts, you fail Y of them"? That's game physics logic.

That's very unusual.

It is my understanding that most people expect the DM to weave the randomness of the campaign setting and mechanics into a coherent story.

Using game physics to tell a story is generally the recommended practice in most RPG rule books that I can think of.



you are picking on one player, making their character look incompetent by focusing on their failures.

That's actually probably the key to the whole thing.

By having a failure, rather than a success, key into the narration, it brings it into a lot more focus.

Its probably the same bias that results from newspapers, that you only report on the exceptional stuff, rather than the ordinary stuff, so people get the perception that horrible and extreme things are happening constantly. So if you say, you succeed twenty times, but the one time you fail it leads into (narrated scene) it is really bringing a lot more attention to it.

That's a very good point.



Also, *both* are horrible, because you're glossing over double-digit damaging falls. If the PCs are taking double-digit damaging falls during downtime, something's probably wrong.

Who said anything about double digit damaging falls?

The PCs were descending into a ruined city which was broken down a mountainside and mostly sat at the bottom of a sinkhole. It was a several day journey over broken terrain with a lot of climbing involved, and I would expect more than a couple slips and falls, but none severe enough that they wouldn't be healed up while the party slept that night.

Satinavian
2020-10-18, 01:15 PM
Specific implementations might be bad, but there are a lot of people who seem to hate the concept of fumbles, regardless of the implementation, because it makes their character look silly or incompetent.Even if that were true, it is not wrong to dislike fumbles for that reason.

But imho most people dislike fumbles because they mostly lead to contrievances or slapstick.


Obviously it depends greatly on the specifics involved. But I would imagine it would be fairly common knowledge if a society practiced cannibalism, human sacrifice, or killing prisoners to preserve their honor. Although, it would probably get obscured by rumors spread by their enemies to make them look worse.A surprising number of enemies PCs tend to fight do have such rumours. In fact evil murderous cults and monsters who eat humanoids are kinda standard enemies.

Battlefields probably not, although cremation wouldn't be uncommon.

But PCs are rarely involved in actual battles, more likely they are caught by patrols while sneaking around or something, in which case I would think bringing the bodies back would be standard practice, especially in civilized lands.Bringing enemy corpses back for a burial is bothersome and most people are not prepared for it. In my experience enemies don't do that more often than PCs. Which means rarely. At least if they don't want to eat the corpses or turn them into undead.


That's very unusual.

It is my understanding that most people expect the DM to weave the randomness of the campaign setting and mechanics into a coherent story.

Using game physics to tell a story is generally the recommended practice in most RPG rule books that I can think of.The randomness is there so the GM doesn't get to just tell a story.

Talakeal
2020-10-18, 02:19 PM
Even if that were true, it is not wrong to dislike fumbles for that reason.

It can be. Being unable to laugh at yourself to the point where you either won't play an otherwise fun game or grinding the game to a halt for an argument / temper tantrum is a lot less fun than if you just learned to lighten up.


But imho most people dislike fumbles because they mostly lead to contrivances or slapstick.

What do you mean by contrivances?

I honestly can't think of one system where fumbles lead to slapstick. There have been a few funny examples (which are great fun for the entire table and give stories to tell for years), but fumbles in general are pretty rare, and it takes a very special overlap of funny and frequent to actually lead to a slapstick situation.


Bringing enemy corpses back for a burial is bothersome and most people are not prepared for it. In my experience enemies don't do that more often than PCs. Which means rarely. At least if they don't want to eat the corpses or turn them into undead.

It really depends on what you are doing. I would expect guards / patrols to frequently bring back bodies for identification, and these are the sort of people that PCs are most likely to be surrendering to. PCs are normally acting on the offense, and thus don't have the same opportunity / incentive to retrieve bodies.

Heck, I remember the last time I actually gathered up the enemy bodies and prepared them for identification after a battle, the rest of the group acted like I was engaging in some horrible act of desecration.



The randomness is there so the GM doesn't get to just tell a story.

This is obvious, but its also missing a lot of nuance.

The players should also be adding their own layer of narrative, and I would say that the outcome of the game is decided in roughly equal parts by the dice, the players, and the game master.

I also think that deciding when to call for a roll, as well as narrating the results of the role, are pretty standard GM duties.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-18, 03:16 PM
In my opinion, randomness in TTRPGs exists solely to give an option for resolving uncertainty. Real uncertainty. If the outcome is certain one way or the other, no randomness is needed. And for heroes (D&D style), certain has pretty large error bars in their favor. That is, it takes a large measure of "chance of failure" (for me nearly 50%) to force a roll, while as little as 5% chance of success is enough to allow a roll.

The fiction layer should always control. If there are possible outcomes of the randomizer that don't fit the fiction established prior, those results don't happen. A rule may say that you can swing off a chandelier by making a <Y check>. But if there's no chandelier around...you can't do it.

The mechanical rules are not the physics of the world. They're a UI layer to help translate between a fiction layer and a game layer. That's all. Now the game is better if there isn't heavy dissonance between the UI and the underlying fiction--that makes for a bad translation layer. Just like having a RTS game controlled in 1st person using a FPS interface would be a bad UI. Or playing an MMO with a controller :smalltongue:. Mechanical results that violate the fiction layer can and should be disregarded. The mechanics are tools to help discover the emerging narrative, they're not in control.

Pex
2020-10-19, 12:48 AM
The players could have purchased the scroll and the components in town, sure, but they chose not to, and at the point where it happened they were exploring some ruins (which happened to have a lot of verticality due to the city was originally built onto a mountainside before sliding into a sinkhole) deep in the wilderness. I thought I was throwing them a bone doing something that fit with in game logic. IMO somehow forcing them to take the identify spell or just throwing it in their path would have been far more along the railroad / controlling DM access.

Ok, they chose not. That's on them. When they want to know what it does they'll make the effort. Let them.


Again, failing the occasional test does not, imo, make the PCs look foolish, it makes them look human. Even the best of us fails occasionally.

This goes back to my initial premise, that fear of failure is really more about pride than railroading.

Failing is not foolish. Failing by DM fiat is. The DM controls the gods, the npcs, the villains, the scenery. The only thing the players get to control is their own characters. Don't take away that control by fiat. If anything, run the encounter where the PCs have to climb, the players controlling their fate on how they get atop whatever it is they're climbing. If the wizard doesn't fall good for him. If he does fall then you can surprise him that the ring activates as a Feather Fall.

Talakeal
2020-10-19, 01:02 AM
Ok, they chose not. That's on them. When they want to know what it does they'll make the effort. Let them.



Failing is not foolish. Failing by DM fiat is. The DM controls the gods, the npcs, the villains, the scenery. The only thing the players get to control is their own characters. Don't take away that control by fiat. If anything, run the encounter where the PCs have to climb, the players controlling their fate on how they get atop whatever it is they're climbing. If the wizard doesn't fall good for him. If he does fall then you can surprise him that the ring activates as a Feather Fall.

First off, I don’t see the connection between a character looking foolish and whether or not the failure was called for by the roll of a dice or GM declaration. Mind elaborating on that?

So are you saying that PCs should automatically succeed at every roll made during downtime (which is, imo, an even worse form of DM fiat) or are you saying that there shouldn’t actually be any downtime in the game and you should roll for absolutely everything? Both seem absurd to me, but I don't see any other way to get around failure by DM fiat.

Satinavian
2020-10-19, 01:48 AM
It can be. Being unable to laugh at yourself to the point where you either won't play an otherwise fun game or grinding the game to a halt for an argument / temper tantrum is a lot less fun than if you just learned to lighten up.

What do you mean by contrivances?

I honestly can't think of one system where fumbles lead to slapstick. There have been a few funny examples (which are great fun for the entire table and give stories to tell for years), but fumbles in general are pretty rare, and it takes a very special overlap of funny and frequent to actually lead to a slapstick situation.Contreivances are results when the GM tries to explain what actually happened. Fumbles in most systems are supposed to be worse than regular failures and to always come up with an idea what might have gone wrong to the required extend can be hard depending on the situation. That is even more true in systems where fumbles might the only way a test fails because ability is far beyond DC but a roll is still made because degree of success matters.

As for fun and slapstick : Comedy is rarely a theme the group is aiming for. Even single fumbles can be annoying and i see eye-rolling more often than laughter even if it is the NPCs who fumble. It gets into slapstick territory when several fumbles happen in short succession. As most systems have fumble chances between 0.7% and 5% (ignoring certain dice pool systems where it can get up to 17%) that is bound to happen in every other scene with lots of rolls.


It really depends on what you are doing. I would expect guards / patrols to frequently bring back bodies for identification, and these are the sort of people that PCs are most likely to be surrendering to. PCs are normally acting on the offense, and thus don't have the same opportunity / incentive to retrieve bodies.Guards, sure. But with guards the bodies are in a guared place anyway. Patrols need to move fast don't want to be burdoned when enemies are around and might not have extra carrying capacity. They most often just take the valuables and leave the rest behind.
Not that is see PCs fighting guards that often or generally being on the offensive. In fact i thing PCs guarding/defending someone/something or being scouts/patrols themself seems more common than the other way around.
But that is a side topic as none of the systems i played in recent years has any kind of resurrection anyway. So body availability does not fator into your willingness to surrender.




This is obvious, but its also missing a lot of nuance.

The players should also be adding their own layer of narrative, and I would say that the outcome of the game is decided in roughly equal parts by the dice, the players, and the game master.

I also think that deciding when to call for a roll, as well as narrating the results of the role, are pretty standard GM duties.Of course it is missing nuance. But in working groups you don't have any arguments about it. When players actually protest the GM narrating instead of rolling, the GM has likely overstepped his bounds. I have yet to experience a situation where such an argument occurs and the GM is not trying to wrestle narrative control from the players to tell his own story instead.

That is mainly because "narrate instead of roll" mostly is done successfully for inconsequential things where the outcome doesn't matter anyway. But people don't argue about things they feel irrelevant.

Pex
2020-10-19, 12:09 PM
First off, I don’t see the connection between a character looking foolish and whether or not the failure was called for by the roll of a dice or GM declaration. Mind elaborating on that?

So are you saying that PCs should automatically succeed at every roll made during downtime (which is, imo, an even worse form of DM fiat) or are you saying that there shouldn’t actually be any downtime in the game and you should roll for absolutely everything? Both seem absurd to me, but I don't see any other way to get around failure by DM fiat.

It's foolish when the DM assumes they fail.

It wasn't downtime. It was narrative traveling.

To get around failure by DM fiat is just don't do it. Don't dictate what the players do. You can say what they see since the DM controls scenery. You don't tell them how they respond.

kyoryu
2020-10-19, 12:38 PM
Again, failing the occasional test does not, imo, make the PCs look foolish, it makes them look human. Even the best of us fails occasionally.

This goes back to my initial premise, that fear of failure is really more about pride than railroading.


A lot depends on how the failure is framed.

Fail to pick the lock? The lock jams, or you don't have the right tool, or..... those do not make the character look incompetent.

Trying to shoot a target? The target moves or ducks at the last minute, a burst of wind blows the arrow aside, etc.

My general rule of thumb is that "if the thing is something we would expect the character to be able to do, frame the failure as due to circumstances rather than just faililng." Some people go further and frame all failure as circumstantial, but I don't think that's necessary if the characters are trying something that's a slim chance anyway.

Telok
2020-10-19, 03:56 PM
Something I've experienced may help explain my reluctance to dictate PC success/failure when I DM.

Something like 3 or 4 times I've had the PCs have simple tasks (a few times with written instructions), and completely fail. Things like triggering death traps that they have written instructions on how to avoid, because they want to see what happens. Or deciding to chase a fleeing villian instead of defusing a bomb, with the timer literally running on a plugged-in alarm clock, in a crowded football stadium.

Combine this tendency to fubar simple things and their ability to pull off amazing wins in the face of impossible odds (generally combat only, but once every couple years something non-combat) and I don't feel that it is fair to deny the players input into their character's actions. This isn't saying that events with forgone conclusions need every die rolled. If someone wants to shoot up a monster trapped at the bottom of a pit and they don't decide to jump down to start punching it then yeah, just say how long it takes and the damage done.

Because I can't rule out the players pulling some stunt, awesome or idiotic, I don't feel justified in saying that any particular sequence of events just automatically happens. I ask for their input and, only if they don't want to do anything interesting or different, then we can skip over stuff that should automatically succeed or fail.

NigelWalmsley
2020-10-19, 04:55 PM
This goes back to my initial premise, that fear of failure is really more about pride than railroading.

It's about character concept. Some characters genuinely should not fail at certain things. If you are playing a Reed Richards expy in a game of Champions, you should not periodically fail to remember high school level science facts. Having that happen is corrosive to your character concept. While it's true that people do fail in real life, there are actually a lot of tasks where the risk of failure is negligible. I'm not going to fail to order Domino's Pizza, or read a book, or move boxes around in my attic. And while those are all mundane tasks, characters in most TTRPGs are substantially harder core than I am and presumably have a higher level of general competence.


I am talking about scenarios where they players can't use all of their abilities for whatever reason (jailbreak, infiltration, environmental conditions, curses, old injuries, etc.)

Those scenarios aren't all equivalent. There's a real difference between "you're captured, have your gear taken, and need to escape", "we decide to sneak into the evil baron's castle", and "the McGuffin is in the middle of a swamp that drains away your willpower".


Specific implementations might be bad, but there are a lot of people who seem to hate the concept of fumbles, regardless of the implementation, because it makes their character look silly or incompetent.

Is there something wrong with that? Moreover, this argument is fundamentally defensive in nature. What's the reason to have fumbles?


The randomness is there so the GM doesn't get to just tell a story.

It's more general than that. Randomness is there to arbitrate between different perspectives on what should happen next. Mostly that's the players and the DM, but it can also be between different players, and not just because of explicit PVP. Having random damage from a sword and a fireball distinguishes between the story where my Fighter stabs the ogre to death and the story where your Wizard blasts him to death.

Talakeal
2020-10-19, 07:00 PM
Contrivances are results when the GM tries to explain what actually happened. Fumbles in most systems are supposed to be worse than regular failures and to always come up with an idea what might have gone wrong to the required extend can be hard depending on the situation. That is even more true in systems where fumbles might the only way a test fails because ability is far beyond DC but a roll is still made because degree of success matters.

Is the complaint specific to games like Rolemaster which have a complex fumble table? I typically play games which allow the GM a little more freedom, and don't think I have ever been in a situation where the GM had to struggle to rationalize a fumble and have a hard time even imagining such a thing.


As for fun and slapstick : Comedy is rarely a theme the group is aiming for. Even single fumbles can be annoying and i see eye-rolling more often than laughter even if it is the NPCs who fumble. It gets into slapstick territory when several fumbles happen in short succession. As most systems have fumble chances between 0.7% and 5% (ignoring certain dice pool systems where it can get up to 17%) that is bound to happen in every other scene with lots of rolls.

Again, what system are you running?

For me, a fumble is something like a friendly fire accident, slipping and falling while climbing, dying after ingesting a poison, jamming a lock, breaking a tool, or pulling a muscle. I can't see how this would be eye-rolling, especially if it is an NPC.

Likewise, I have been playing predominantly systems with fumbles for decades, and I can't recall any time when there where multiple fumbles happened in short succession, the odds are just too remote.

And yeah, really funny fumbles are pretty rare, but a good laugh is fun for everyone involved, and my group has several stories involving a fumble that ended up being funny that we still laugh about decades later.


Not that is see PCs fighting guards that often or generally being on the offensive. In fact i thing PCs guarding/defending someone/something or being scouts/patrols themself seems more common than the other way around.

That really strikes me as unusual. Dungeon crawls and raiding enemy strongholds are, imo, the default form of adventure for most systems. Being on guard duty is pretty rare.



It's foolish when the DM assumes they fail.

I think this conversation wandered, I thought we were talking about failure making the PC look foolish, not the DM doing something foolish.



To get around failure by DM fiat is just don't do it. Don't dictate what the players do. You can say what they see since the DM controls scenery. You don't tell them how they respond.

Again, we seem to be talking over one another.

I was never talking about dictating the player's actions. I was talking about the player deciding what they do, and the DM deciding whether or not it is worth rolling for.

In this specific example, the players told me they were climbing down into the ruins, and the player told me that he was wearing the ring and trying to figure out what it did.

So I told him that he discovered that it was a ring of feather fall at some point after slipping during the climb, a statistical likelihood that was both faster and more beneficial than simply telling the players to make thirty climb checks over the course of the journey.


Is there something wrong with that? Moreover, this argument is fundamentally defensive in nature. What's the reason to have fumbles?


As I said a few posts ago, people are denying themselves (and their friends) fun by refusing to play and / or throwing a tantrum rather than just getting over their ego and lightening up a bit.

I see fumbles as providing the following benefits:

1: They increases verisimilitude and realism.
2: They increases variety and introduces a bit of novelty.
3: They provides mathematical balance to critical successes.
4: They give the Game Master a great tool to alter the mood (I think this is the reason why most people object to them)


Those scenarios aren't all equivalent. There's a real difference between "you're captured, have your gear taken, and need to escape", "we decide to sneak into the evil baron's castle", and "the McGuffin is in the middle of a swamp that drains away your willpower".

I didn't say they were.

I started talking about this in response to the guy who said players have any and every right and reason to complain about any scenario that doesn't allow them to operate at their character's full power as a reason not to run a jailbreak scenario, and was giving examples of various common scenarios that also don't allow the PCs to act at their full power to see if they were all equally objectionable.


It's about character concept. Some characters genuinely should not fail at certain things. If you are playing a Reed Richards expy in a game of Champions, you should not periodically fail to remember high school level science facts. Having that happen is corrosive to your character concept. While it's true that people do fail in real life, there are actually a lot of tasks where the risk of failure is negligible. I'm not going to fail to order Domino's Pizza, or read a book, or move boxes around in my attic. And while those are all mundane tasks, characters in most TTRPGs are substantially harder core than I am and presumably have a higher level of general competence.

I agree.

The idea is not to override player agency, but to reinforce it.

Hyper-competent PCs shouldn't fail at trivial stuff, but they should also be pushing themselves. Reed Richards performs cutting edge science, and a lot of FF plots are about him pushing himself too far and something going wrong (for example, their origin story).*

To me, if a player says they are playing a professional burglar who makes a living by breaking into rich people's homes during their downtime, then it is, imo, best practices to use that as hook. Saying that "The prince offers you a job to infiltrate the dark lords castle" is standard fare, but if I say "Last week, one of your jobs went wrong when the new guy on your crew panicked, and as a result you found yourself surrounded by the city watch and clapped in iron's. But, as you lie in your cell awaiting trial, a mysterious man comes to talk to you, telling you that the prince requires someone of your unique talents to infiltrate the dark lord's castle, and there will be a full pardon in it for you on top of your reward," then that is tying the player's downtime activities and their character's skill in with the scenario.




*I was actually thinking about this earlier today. Years ago I was mad that an edition change in Mage removed the ability to make permanent changes, and one of the other players told me that it was supposed to be a horror game, and that you needed to feel powerless for horror to work. I disagreed, I thought that the horror of Mage was about hubris, and getting in over your head, and the price of success. And this morning I was watching Rick and Morty and couldn't help but notice that Rick's problems don't come from his incompetence, but rather that he is too competent and proud, he doesn't consider the possibility of failure until it is too late and he just goes ahead and digs himself deeper and deeper into it. To me, that is where the horror should come from in a game like Mage.

Pelle
2020-10-20, 06:36 AM
In this specific example, the players told me they were climbing down into the ruins, and the player told me that he was wearing the ring and trying to figure out what it did.

So I told him that he discovered that it was a ring of feather fall at some point after slipping during the climb, a statistical likelihood that was both faster and more beneficial than simply telling the players to make thirty climb checks over the course of the journey.


I think how you frame it can go a long way here. Do you explain that this is a repeated difficult task, which with subpar skill then statistically is going to involve some failures over the course of the whole climb, before describing the specific failure for one of those? Or do you wait to explain that only until after the player starts protesting? The former will likely make it palatable, while the latter is going to make some people annoyed. Getting players to accept your rulings is much easier if you provide your reasoning with them as you make them.

Satinavian
2020-10-20, 07:46 AM
Is the complaint specific to games like Rolemaster which have a complex fumble table? I typically play games which allow the GM a little more freedom, and don't think I have ever been in a situation where the GM had to struggle to rationalize a fumble and have a hard time even imagining such a thing.I think the system i spent most time with was TDE, which has (rather short) defined fumble tables for combat and leaves it to the GM for other skills or for magic. But i have played many other systems with fumbles as well and most allow the GM some freedom. That doesn't mean every GM can come up with ideas what might go wrong with every action on the spot. That is even more true when the GM is somewhat tired because it is a late after work session.

Likewise, I have been playing predominantly systems with fumbles for decades, and I can't recall any time when there where multiple fumbles happened in short succession, the odds are just too remote. Just had it last weak in Splittermond (which also has fumble tables for combat and a 3& fumble chance for most cases). PC buffs himself successfully with some see-through-single-enemy-movements action and attacks. Fumbles, falls flat on her face. Enemy, now free to disengage and attack some other PC who has not such an advatage one-on-one, charges the other PC and... fumbles, falls flat on his face.

No one at the table laughed, but eye-rolling all around. Maybe my various gamer circles don't have the same sense of humor as yours do.


And yeah, really funny fumbles are pretty rare, but a good laugh is fun for everyone involved, and my group has several stories involving a fumble that ended up being funny that we still laugh about decades later.Now, most fumbles are not a problem. It is only occasionally bad for the mood or immersion breaking. But i don't really see any benefit in fumbles, much less one that counters the occasional bad effects.

That really strikes me as unusual. Dungeon crawls and raiding enemy strongholds are, imo, the default form of adventure for most systems. Being on guard duty is pretty rare.Thinking back, to a session i had yesterday that was "defend a caravan, solve a riddle, defend a town". My sesond to last session (another group) had no combat. The session before (yet another group) was "find people in the wilerness (and fight in a random encounter), do diplomacy and riddle solving, esort them through enemy terrain". I have to go yet another session back to get a "enter enemy stronghold to steal something. Be stealthy" mission.

So... nope. Dungeon crawls and raiding strongholds are not really that common. Especially if you don't use D&D and derivates.





1: They increases verisimilitude and realism.
2: They increases variety and introduces a bit of novelty.
3: They provides mathematical balance to critical successes.
4: They give the Game Master a great tool to alter the mood (I think this is the reason why most people object to them)
I disagree with one and four, think two is irrelevant, dislike critical successes as well.

Democratus
2020-10-20, 10:51 AM
It's about character concept. Some characters genuinely should not fail at certain things.

Fundamentally disagree. Failure is always a possibility. It is where tension is generated in emergent storytelling.


I'm not going to fail to order Domino's Pizza, or read a book, or move boxes around in my attic.

I have failed at all of these tasks before. Often to hilarious effect. I once ordered a pizza which was then delivered to a friend's house in Amsterdam instead of my home in Texas.

This definitely seems like a pride issue rather than a concept issue.

Talakeal
2020-10-20, 11:01 AM
Oh, #5 got cut out of my previous post.

#5: Fumbles can also dissuade players from attempting actions which they have no business taking (for example an uneducated farmer attempting to reprogram an alien super-computer). Although this is probably a bad thing if you are running more of a pulp adventure style game, it helps in a game where you want people to take things more seriously and consider the consequences of their actions.


I think how you frame it can go a long way here. Do you explain that this is a repeated difficult task, which with subpar skill then statistically is going to involve some failures over the course of the whole climb, before describing the specific failure for one of those? Or do you wait to explain that only until after the player starts protesting? The former will likely make it palatable, while the latter is going to make some people annoyed. Getting players to accept your rulings is much easier if you provide your reasoning with them as you make them.

I tried after the fact, although by that point the player had already decided to die on the hill and it did little good. I probably would be more careful about that today.

To me, though, it seemed self evident that if a player is routinely attempting a task off camera, and that task has a chance of failure when rolled for, that they will succeed on some and fail attempts and fail on others, and that the failures are more likely to result in something significant happening and adversity and novelty are often the source of drama, innovation, and encounters with the unknown.


Thinking back, to a session i had yesterday that was "defend a caravan, solve a riddle, defend a town". My sesond to last session (another group) had no combat. The session before (yet another group) was "find people in the wilderness (and fight in a random encounter), do diplomacy and riddle solving, esort them through enemy terrain". I have to go yet another session back to get a "enter enemy stronghold to steal something. Be stealthy" mission.

So... nope. Dungeon crawls and raiding strongholds are not really that common. Especially if you don't use D&D and derivates.

Defense missions are pretty hardcore, as it also means you can't really retreat, and the consequences for failure are pretty severe. On the other hand, if you surrender you probably won't even be taken captive, the enemy will just take what they came for and leave. I can't say I have ever played a game where defense is the norm, to me it seems both really stressful due to the consequences for failure and really boring due to the lack of exploration, but I can see that.



I disagree with one and four, think two is irrelevant, dislike critical successes as well.

Don't think I have ever seen a player who didn't like critical successes, although I have seen players who think they should be PC only as they prefer games to be more predictable and safe.

Not quite sure how novelty is irrelevant as it is, to me, a fundamental aspect of entertainment, but I guess I can't really argue with that opinion.

As for disagreeing with four, are you saying that nobody ever has an emotional reaction to a fumble? Not laughter, despair, or even frustration? You must play with really stoic groups then if the only reaction you can ever get is eye-rolling.

For number one, it baffles me how people can disagree with this. In real life, I frequently fumble something. I injure myself playing sports and doing physical labor, I ruin my materials when crafting, I have accidents while driving, I offend people while talking, etc. Likewise, it is my understanding that even experts mess up bad now and again, athletes have season or even career ending injuries, doctors and lawyers get sued for malpractice, etc.

Even 3.X D&D, which doesn't have formal fumble rules, acknowledges that there is a difference between making no progress and making things worse, for example falling when falling a climbing check by five or more. PF2 has taken this one step further, using it to allow for situations where something bad can happen but is uncommon, for example if you roll bad enough poison can kill a character, but most of the time it will just make them sick. To me, this seems both extremely realistic and good for gameplay.



Just had it last weak in Splittermond (which also has fumble tables for combat and a 3& fumble chance for most cases). PC buffs himself successfully with some see-through-single-enemy-movements action and attacks. Fumbles, falls flat on her face. Enemy, now free to disengage and attack some other PC who has not such an advantage one-on-one, charges the other PC and... fumbles, falls flat on his face.

No one at the table laughed, but eye-rolling all around. Maybe my various gamer circles don't have the same sense of humor as yours do.

Now, most fumbles are not a problem. It is only occasionally bad for the mood or immersion breaking. But i don't really see any benefit in fumbles, much less one that counters the occasional bad effects.

I find it hard to believe that I have a great sense of humor about gaming. I take gaming very seriously, and most of my games are melodramatic and edgy.

In your example, I don't find that too unrealistic. In real life, it is my understanding that a large percentage of close combat encounters end up with both combatants rolling around on the ground, and that is also my experience from fights on the playground as a kid as well as watching MMA fights.

To make it more realistic, the GM could simply describe it as enemy interference (for example, a downed fighter grabs at their enemies ankles and pulls them down with them, or overextends to finish a prone opponent with a powerful blow, only to topple over or find their weapon stuck in the ground when their enemy rolls out of the way at the last second) or simply retcon in some setting detail like a mud puddle that makes falling seem more likely.

Depending on the nature of the scene (and player motivation) I can see two outcomes for fighters frequently fumbling.

One, in a more light hearted scene, have them realize that they are rolling around in the mud and have them simply sit back and start laughing about how silly the whole affair is in a sort of Gilgamesh and Enkidu scene.

Two, simply show that they are so consumed by their hatred of one another that they are not caring about defense, and are simply swinging wildly and recklessly trying to tear their opponent apart with no regard for their own safety or comfort.

zinycor
2020-10-20, 02:02 PM
To me, though, it seemed self evident that if a player is routinely attempting a task off camera, and that task has a chance of failure when rolled for, that they will succeed on some and fail attempts and fail on others, and that the failures are more likely to result in something significant happening and adversity and novelty are often the source of drama, innovation, and encounters with the unknown.



I completely disagree on this, if a task is done off camera I wouldn't expect any failures or success yo be any significant source of drama. Otherwise I would have it be on camera.

Talakeal
2020-10-20, 02:09 PM
I completely disagree on this, if a task is done off camera I wouldn't expect any failures or success to be any significant source of drama. Otherwise I would have it be on camera.

The idea, at least for me, is to tie the character's background into the adventure to reinforce, not to negate, a character's identity.

For example, my character in Mage works as a doctor between adventures. If you use that as a hook for the adventure, for example have my character looking for the water of life to cure a patient that I have been unable to treat with conventional means, that reinforces my character identity and serves to tie together downtime activities to those that occur on camera.

IMO tying on and off camera activities together enhances both; it makes character background matter more to the game and it also gives the adventure more personal stakes.

zinycor
2020-10-20, 02:29 PM
The idea, at least for me, is to tie the character's background into the adventure to reinforce, not to negate, a character's identity.

For example, my character in Mage works as a doctor between adventures. If you use that as a hook for the adventure, for example have my character looking for the water of life to cure a patient that I have been unable to treat with conventional means, that reinforces my character identity and serves to tie together downtime activities to those that occur on camera.

IMO tying on and off camera activities together enhances both; it makes character background matter more to the game and it also gives the adventure more personal stakes.

Sure, but as the player that would be your choice to have those motivations. If, for example, the GM were to tell a player that their character has, off camera, failed a number of surgeries and earned a bad reputation as a result, the player will probably get upset if that doesn't fit his view of the character.

Talakeal
2020-10-20, 03:53 PM
Sure, but as the player that would be your choice to have those motivations. If, for example, the GM were to tell a player that their character has, off camera, failed a number of surgeries and earned a bad reputation as a result, the player will probably get upset if that doesn't fit his view of the character.

The idea is to work with the player to reinforce their character concept. If they were playing a highly competent doctor I wouldn't do something like that, if they were trying to play Dr Nick on the other hand...

ExLibrisMortis
2020-10-20, 04:28 PM
The fiction layer should always control. If there are possible outcomes of the randomizer that don't fit the fiction established prior, those results don't happen. A rule may say that you can swing off a chandelier by making a <Y check>. But if there's no chandelier around...you can't do it.
Interesting that you should say that, because I would say it should be the other way around. The mechanics are "in control" (the independent variable, that the experimenter can alter), and the plot emerges as you play (the dependent variable, that the experimenter records). The use of randomization is that you get to places you wouldn't get if you were just writing a story; the mechanics dictate what happens, and because they are partially random, you can end up with surprising stories. Planning a story ahead is more like a weather forecast: accurate for the current scene, a decent spread for next week, no clue what's going to happen in three months (but probably a different season). An experienced forecaster is more often right than wrong, but you're never quite sure.

Your example of "lack-of-a-chandelier" is not an example of randomization. What would be an example of "possible outcomes of the randomizer that don't fit the fiction established prior" is something like "You may roll to swing from the chandelier. You roll an 18, which means that you succeed. However, I'm going to ignore that result, because it doesn't fit the story". Which is weird and stupid. I imagine that isn't what you meant, though, and if we change the example to "You roll a 1, which means you're all dead. However, I'm going to ignore that result", then we're all in agreement that it's probably for the best. It's bad to ignore the dice, but it's worse to disappoint the players that much (assuming they are disappointed--I understand Paranoia runs on the hilarity of this sort of thing).

In general, if you let something get to the RNG stage, you have to be prepared to accept all outcomes. You can decide not to roll (DM call, fair enough), you can decide what to roll and with what caveats (DM call, fair enough), you can in extremis decide to retcon a certain roll that really bums everyone out (as with the TPK above), but you can't decide you don't like the result and do something else "because that's not the story".

The corollary is: Anything you allow to get to the RNG stage must be chosen so as to produce outcomes you are prepared to accept. Because, of course, you're not stupidly consulting your random tables and hoping a plot emerges. You choose the mechanical descriptions for the actors that drive the plot-to-be-built in such a way that they'll produce a range of acceptable results, and then play it out to see which specific plot emerges. You don't equip an NPC with a mechanic that causes a roll for TPK (unless the plot demands) anymore than you allow a PC to roll to become Old Man Henderson (unless the plot demands... which by definition it doesn't :smalltongue:).

Of course, this is the ideal case, and even if you're really good at choosing your mechanics, you may need to adjust things on the fly to keep everyone happy. But that's not so much "the fiction layer is in control" as it is "player enjoyment is in control". You might adjust the mechanics to rescue a plot, but you might equally adjust mechanics to produce more wild variation.

icefractal
2020-10-20, 05:29 PM
Interesting that you should say that, because I would say it should be the other way around. The mechanics are "in control" (the independent variable, that the experimenter can alter), and the plot emerges as you play (the dependent variable, that the experimenter records).The terms are used somewhat inconsistently, but how I've generally heard it fiction != plot.

The fiction is the world that you're playing in and its internal logic, which will sometimes clash with the mechanics. When this happens, you have to conform one to the other. So for example, you're playing Fate, one PC has "Last Son of Krypton" as an aspect, and they're in an arm-wrestling contest (an important one, maybe this is for the key information they need). The mechanics (an aspect is worth +2) conflict with the fiction (Superman has zero chance to lose at arm wrestling). You can resolve it three ways:

1) Restrict fiction to mechanics:
GM: "You can't be Superman as an aspect, aspects are for more subtle/variable things like being really determined."

2) Conform fiction to mechanics:
GM: "You lost the roll, so how does that happen?"
Player: "Maybe with my super-senses I noticed that the guy I'm arm wrestling has dangerously high blood pressure and if he pushed any harder he might have a stroke, so I intentionally lost."

3) Conform mechanics to fiction:
GM: "There's no roll, you win automatically."

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-20, 08:44 PM
The terms are used somewhat inconsistently, but how I've generally heard it fiction != plot.

The fiction is the world that you're playing in and its internal logic, which will sometimes clash with the mechanics. When this happens, you have to conform one to the other. So for example, you're playing Fate, one PC has "Last Son of Krypton" as an aspect, and they're in an arm-wrestling contest (an important one, maybe this is for the key information they need). The mechanics (an aspect is worth +2) conflict with the fiction (Superman has zero chance to lose at arm wrestling). You can resolve it three ways:

1) Restrict fiction to mechanics:
GM: "You can't be Superman as an aspect, aspects are for more subtle/variable things like being really determined."

2) Conform fiction to mechanics:
GM: "You lost the roll, so how does that happen?"
Player: "Maybe with my super-senses I noticed that the guy I'm arm wrestling has dangerously high blood pressure and if he pushed any harder he might have a stroke, so I intentionally lost."

3) Conform mechanics to fiction:
GM: "There's no roll, you win automatically."

Yeah. That's what I mean.

I differentiate three layers of every TTRPG:

1. The player layer. This is where the actual people are, sitting around a computer screen or table or whatever. At this layer, you have access to the game ui, but not directly the fiction. Everything is filtered through the words and images presented by the DM (in standard D&D-esque games) or by other players. Planned plots happen at this level.

2. The mechanics/UI layer. This is a translation shim between the player layer and the fiction layer. It's entire job is to provide a fun set of tools to translate player decisions into fiction events and back. But it's both lossy and incomplete by necessity. It's a toolbox for the one(s) driving things. It's not in command of anything and can and should be overruled when it would make decisions/demand outcomes that the table is not happy with or that are incompatible with the fiction layer. Randomization happens at this level, to represent all the fuzz that happens below the abstraction level of the game. Basically it's to resolve uncertainty, nothing else. If there's no uncertainty, there's no need to invoke randomization. And random tables and dice rolls, being generated for the general case, can't know about all the specifics of any situation and will always need active intervention.

3. The fiction layer. This is the representation of everything inside the fictional world. At this layer are the actual characters, living and existing in some world with all its laws (which go way beyond what can be represented mechanically). It has weight--previous events can make certain future events impossible or overwhelmingly likely, and that should (IMO) override anything that the game mechanics say--you shouldn't even invoke mechanics in those conditions, and if a general random table says otherwise, it gets ignored for that case.

So for every player action in a D&D game, the DM has to establish a few things.
1. Is that a possible action/outcome based on the established facts of play (the fiction layer)? If not, stop there. It doesn't happen, no matter what the mechanics say. E.g. walking up to a king out of the blue and demanding his crown. No, your Charisma (Persuasion) roll, no matter how high, can't get that result. At least not without setup to change the facts on the ground inside the fiction layer.

2. Is that action/outcome in significant doubt based on the fiction layer? If not, just let it happen. No need to make a check (invoking mechanics) for tying your shoes, unless something is really strange in-universe.

3. Is it worth making a check for. That is, would failure change the fiction layer in an interesting way? Are there complications that mean it can't be easily retried until complete? Generally, if not, just let it happen. At most make one check to determine how long it takes (if that's an interesting parameter in the situation).
------------
4. At this point, you probably need a check of some type. Use the normal process to determine what kind of check and what the failure and success conditions are.

The same thing goes for random table use--unless something is demanded by the fiction layer (e.g. wasting time in a place where wandering monsters are an established fact, activating a wand of wonder), those sorts of things should happen off-camera, during prep. And the results used as inspiration, as input to the planning process, subject to the normal flow of building scenarios for your particular play style and game. No matter what, random tables should never be allowed to cause disruption to the fiction. If dragons don't exist, no random encounter table can have dragons on it. Or use a general one and prune those results when they occur (whichever you prefer). They violate setting and fiction constraints, so they never get inserted into the database. They're no-ops.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-20, 11:32 PM
And what I meant about the "lack of a chandelier" being a randomization failure was as follows:

A character has a feature that lets them make a DC X Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to swing from a chandelier (specifically mentioned in the feature text), dealing +2d6 damage to a foe they land on.

They attempt to use this feature in the middle of a forest, roll the check, and beat the DC. Are they able to use the feature?

The fiction says no--there are no chandeliers. The mechanics say yes--if (result) > X, then you swing off a chandelier. Now you can just say "oh, well, that part about the chandelier is fluff, he's swinging off a branch." But that's not what the ability says. It specifically says chandelier. Does it create a chandelier even if there isn't one and couldn't be one? That would be the mechanics superseding the fiction, with absurd results. The other option is "no, that ability isn't useful here, you don't have a chandelier to swing off of." That's the fiction controlling the mechanics. The fictional facts establish which mechanical results (whether of randomization or not) are allowed.

Basically, all randomizer results have to be filtered based on the established facts. Any that don't fit or that would create absurdities get rejected. Rolled a gargantuan creature for an encounter in a kobold warren? Roll again, that one didn't happen. Roll a 30 on a Charisma (Persuasion) check? You're still not going to get that dragon to let you walk out with half his hoard unmolested. Rolled a 1 on that Dexterity (Acrobatics) check? You still can walk down the stairs just fine (and why did you roll that again?).

I find most of the "absurd" results come from players jumping the gun and rolling things that weren't called for or DMs calling for rolls where they shouldn't (where the outcome was either not in doubt or failure wasn't interesting). The solution is to...stop doing that.

Pex
2020-10-21, 12:48 AM
And what I meant about the "lack of a chandelier" being a randomization failure was as follows:

A character has a feature that lets them make a DC X Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to swing from a chandelier (specifically mentioned in the feature text), dealing +2d6 damage to a foe they land on.

They attempt to use this feature in the middle of a forest, roll the check, and beat the DC. Are they able to use the feature?

The fiction says no--there are no chandeliers. The mechanics say yes--if (result) > X, then you swing off a chandelier. Now you can just say "oh, well, that part about the chandelier is fluff, he's swinging off a branch." But that's not what the ability says. It specifically says chandelier. Does it create a chandelier even if there isn't one and couldn't be one? That would be the mechanics superseding the fiction, with absurd results. The other option is "no, that ability isn't useful here, you don't have a chandelier to swing off of." That's the fiction controlling the mechanics. The fictional facts establish which mechanical results (whether of randomization or not) are allowed.

Basically, all randomizer results have to be filtered based on the established facts. Any that don't fit or that would create absurdities get rejected. Rolled a gargantuan creature for an encounter in a kobold warren? Roll again, that one didn't happen. Roll a 30 on a Charisma (Persuasion) check? You're still not going to get that dragon to let you walk out with half his hoard unmolested. Rolled a 1 on that Dexterity (Acrobatics) check? You still can walk down the stairs just fine (and why did you roll that again?).

I find most of the "absurd" results come from players jumping the gun and rolling things that weren't called for or DMs calling for rolls where they shouldn't (where the outcome was either not in doubt or failure wasn't interesting). The solution is to...stop doing that.

I agree with you. Really :smallbiggrin:, but not intending to start the usual infamy of you know what how do you teach players and DMs to stop doing that because apparently the DMG saying the same thing of not rolling for trivial stuff isn't working. To teach the players the DM can do it at least by virtue of authority of being the DM running the game. For the players to teach the DM it's not reciprocal. They lack the authority. Only DM willful acceptance to change his ways because the players want him to can work. Otherwise the DM can easily dismiss them as munchkins/whiners who hate failure. The players either give in or walk, achieving nothing.

Satinavian
2020-10-21, 10:47 AM
Oh, #5 got cut out of my previous post.

#5: Fumbles can also dissuade players from attempting actions which they have no business taking (for example an uneducated farmer attempting to reprogram an alien super-computer). Although this is probably a bad thing if you are running more of a pulp adventure style game, it helps in a game where you want people to take things more seriously and consider the consequences of their actions.They are not useful for that as fumbles tend to happen in easy tasks as often as in difficult ones.

If you want to discourage that, use cost of attempt (time, materials ect.) or degree of failure (if you really have no clue what you do, you might make it worse).


As for disagreeing with four, are you saying that nobody ever has an emotional reaction to a fumble? Not laughter, despair, or even frustration? You must play with really stoic groups then if the only reaction you can ever get is eye-rolling.I wouldn't say never, but it is rare that a fumble produces much emotion. Either it fits the situation than it is what it is. Or it doesn't and most are mildly annoyed for the disturbance of versimilitude. But i do tend to play with people who value versimilitude most.

For number one, it baffles me how people can disagree with this. In real life, I frequently fumble something. I injure myself playing sports and doing physical labor, I ruin my materials when crafting, I have accidents while driving, I offend people while talking, etc. Likewise, it is my understanding that even experts mess up bad now and again, athletes have season or even career ending injuries, doctors and lawyers get sued for malpractice, etc.And how often have people serious mishaps every week or every day ? In the time played out, there tend to be a lot of rolls.

Even 3.X D&D, which doesn't have formal fumble rules, acknowledges that there is a difference between making no progress and making things worse, for example falling when falling a climbing check by five or more. PF2 has taken this one step further, using it to allow for situations where something bad can happen but is uncommon, for example if you roll bad enough poison can kill a character, but most of the time it will just make them sick. To me, this seems both extremely realistic and good for gameplay.Degree of failure rules are very different from fumble rules.

ExLibrisMortis
2020-10-21, 11:50 AM
The terms are used somewhat inconsistently, but how I've generally heard it fiction != plot.

The fiction is the world that you're playing in and its internal logic, which will sometimes clash with the mechanics. When this happens, you have to conform one to the other. So for example, you're playing Fate, one PC has "Last Son of Krypton" as an aspect, and they're in an arm-wrestling contest (an important one, maybe this is for the key information they need). The mechanics (an aspect is worth +2) conflict with the fiction (Superman has zero chance to lose at arm wrestling). You can resolve it three ways:

1) Restrict fiction to mechanics:
GM: "You can't be Superman as an aspect, aspects are for more subtle/variable things like being really determined."

2) Conform fiction to mechanics:
GM: "You lost the roll, so how does that happen?"
Player: "Maybe with my super-senses I noticed that the guy I'm arm wrestling has dangerously high blood pressure and if he pushed any harder he might have a stroke, so I intentionally lost."

3) Conform mechanics to fiction:
GM: "There's no roll, you win automatically."
Ah, right, thanks. Fiction is the world as sensible, consistent place. Good to know.

Your example shows why you should pick the mechanics (aspects, in this case) carefully. If "zero chance to lose" cannot be represented by a +2, that mechanic shouldn't be chosen to represent that character trait (option 1, essentially), and if you do it anyway, you end up with (2). I don't like (3).


And what I meant about the "lack of a chandelier" being a randomization failure was as follows:

A character has a feature that lets them make a DC X Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to swing from a chandelier (specifically mentioned in the feature text), dealing +2d6 damage to a foe they land on.

They attempt to use this feature in the middle of a forest, roll the check, and beat the DC. Are they able to use the feature?

The fiction says no--there are no chandeliers. The mechanics say yes--if (result) > X, then you swing off a chandelier.
I get your point now. If you phrase it like that, it's a weird and problematic ability. According to the principle of "don't allow a mechanic that produces results you aren't prepared to accept", it shouldn't be allowed in the first place. Rephrase it to "if there is a chandelier, you can make a check to swing from it". But yeah, if you catch a mechanic like that during the game, you'll have to adjust it there and then.

If I've got it right, what you are saying is that the mechanics shouldn't threaten internal consistency of the world by producing absurd results. I agree with that. However, my preferred approach is to curate the mechanics, not the results. I don't like the idea of deciding internal consistency on an ad hoc basis. If that's how real life worked (still the best model for a consistent world we have), nuclear fusion wouldn't be a thing--that **** is unbalanced. Joking aside, there are problems with my approach (e.g. overseeing all possible results is basically impossible), so I take your point.

What I wrote earlier was about a separate category of "absurd" results that are absurd in the sense that they don't match player expectations/descriptive text. To illustrate the difference: In 3.5 (because I'm a one-game sort of person and all my examples have to be 3.5), a lot of the game descriptions--and thus, (new) players--tactitly assume that wizards are horrible in melee all of the time. It's actually rather straightforward to make a wizard good in melee, and nothing in-universe is absurd about "I turn into a literal giant and smash his face in" (I mean, what did you think was going to happen?), but it's still sometimes considered absurd, and people do actually nerf things for that reasons, which is a pet peeve of mine. Hence the post and all.

(I imagine everyone on these forums has heard of 3.5 and its wacky casters, but you can find people who haven't elsewhere.)


I find most of the "absurd" results come from players jumping the gun and rolling things that weren't called for or DMs calling for rolls where they shouldn't (where the outcome was either not in doubt or failure wasn't interesting). The solution is to...stop doing that.
I agree, and yes, it is. I've played a few sessions revolving around Perception rolls to advance the plot, which is just... ugh.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-21, 12:04 PM
I get your point now. If you phrase it like that, it's a weird and problematic ability. According to the principle of "don't allow a mechanic that produces results you aren't prepared to accept", it shouldn't be allowed in the first place. Rephrase it to "if there is a chandelier, you can make a check to swing from it". But yeah, if you catch a mechanic like that during the game, you'll have to adjust it there and then.


It was intentionally absurd to make a point, but I've had people argue similar things--that because "the rules say the DC for X is Y, I can do X even if the fictional setup doesn't make that possible and no matter how absurd (in universe) that would be right now because rules say so". And for me, that's painful. The world comes first. It's internal logic is what it is, and anything mechanical that threatens that gets ignored (for cases where it makes sense normally, but not right now) or changed (for cases where it never makes sense).



If I've got it right, what you are saying is that the mechanics shouldn't threaten internal consistency of the world by producing absurd results. I agree with that. However, my preferred approach is to curate the mechanics, not the results. I don't like the idea of deciding internal consistency on an ad hoc basis. If that's how real life worked (still the best model for a consistent world we have), nuclear fusion wouldn't be a thing--that **** is unbalanced. Joking aside, there are problems with my approach (e.g. overseeing all possible results is basically impossible), so I take your point.

What I wrote earlier was about a separate category of "absurd" results that are absurd in the sense that they don't match player expectations/descriptive text. To illustrate the difference: In 3.5 (because I'm a one-game sort of person and all my examples have to be 3.5), a lot of the game descriptions--and thus, (new) players--tactitly assume that wizards are horrible in melee all of the time. It's actually rather straightforward to make a wizard good in melee, and nothing in-universe is absurd about "I turn into a literal giant and smash his face in" (I mean, what did you think was going to happen?), but it's still sometimes considered absurd, and people do actually nerf things for that reasons, which is a pet peeve of mine. Hence the post and all.

(I imagine everyone on these forums has heard of 3.5 and its wacky casters, but you can find people who haven't elsewhere.)


I separate it into two cases.

Things that never make sense in this particular world. This means you should make global houserules/changes to randomizer/mechanics results. Ie dragons don't exist in this world, so any table that says "insert dragon encounter" must change. Or resurrection isn't a thing, so all res spells go bye bye. Or there are no gods, so clerics need to be gone or faiths/philosophies. Etc.

Things that don't make sense right now, but sometimes do. This can have situational edits to randomizer outcomes where consistency isn't all that important. If this particular NPC cannot ever be bullied (5e's Charisma (Intimidation)), then any attempt to do so just fails. Don't even roll. Or if this particular NPC can't be persuaded to do X, then any attempt to get him to do X fails. If <culture Y> has an aversion to crossbows (for example), you can either create a custom random loot table that doesn't have crossbows (lots of work) or just re-roll any crossbow results that occur on your generic ones. Etc.

A lot of these changes are things that are invisible to the players because they happen at prep time rather than table time. I, for one, hate rolling on random encounter/loot/etc tables at runtime. Because I hate slowing things down, and tables are a major source of slow. So I prefer to push all of that to prep time.

The rest should be clear from the stated facts on the ground--if there's a question, the DM didn't set up the scene properly and needs to re-explain stuff.



I agree, and yes, it is. I've played a few sessions revolving around Perception rolls to advance the plot, which is just... ugh.

Agreed. And "roll to turn the door knob...oh, you failed? Too bad." stupidity. DMs who think you need to roll for everything...sigh.

Talakeal
2020-10-21, 03:04 PM
They are not useful for that as fumbles tend to happen in easy tasks as often as in difficult ones.

If you want to discourage that, use cost of attempt (time, materials ect.) or degree of failure (if you really have no clue what you do, you might make it worse).

Degree of failure rules are very different from fumble rules.

We might be having a terminology failure then. In my mind fumbles are synonymous with degrees of failure; in effect, a normal failure means nothing happens, a fumble means you fail so badly you make the situation worse.

How do you differentiate the two?


And how often have people serious mishaps every week or every day ? In the time played out, there tend to be a lot of rolls.

Serious mishaps? Not very often. But fumbles don't have to be serious.

I would say I have a minor mishap such as burning a meal, or pulling a muscle at work, or tripping and breaking something atleast once a week.


I wouldn't say never, but it is rare that a fumble produces much emotion. Either it fits the situation than it is what it is. Or it doesn't and most are mildly annoyed for the disturbance of versimilitude. But i do tend to play with people who value versimilitude most.

For me, fumbles enhance verisimilitude. In real life, people make mistakes, and there are a plethora of outcomes, both good and bad, for any action.

icefractal
2020-10-21, 05:13 PM
We might be having a terminology failure then. In my mind fumbles are synonymous with degrees of failure; in effect, a normal failure means nothing happens, a fumble means you fail so badly you make the situation worse.

How do you differentiate the two?Most fumble rules I've seen in D&D are based on rolling a natural '1', not on how much you failed by.

So a veteran soldier firing a bow from a battlement (no enemies personally threatening him) and a drunk guy with no combat experience using a spiked chain (for the first time ever) in a chaotic brawl have the exact same chance to fumble.

Per attack, that is. Per minute, the veteran soldier fumbles considerably more.


Pet Peeve, btw: Fumbles that involve anything like dropping weapons, hitting the wrong target, etc are not the inverse of critical hits. You know what critical hits do? One extra attack's worth of damage (or sometimes a bit less). So an actually corresponding fumble to that would be:

If you roll a natural '1', make another attack roll. If that misses, you are off balance and will automatically miss the next attack you make.

That's it, no other effects. Yes, there are improved criticals, but nobody is going to make a weapon that's extra-likely to **** up, or do special training (aka a feat) to **** up more. Maybe if someone is using a non-proficient weapon they could have extra fumbles, that's about the only case it makes sense.

Talakeal
2020-10-21, 07:18 PM
Pet Peeve, btw: Fumbles that involve anything like dropping weapons, hitting the wrong target, etc are not the inverse of critical hits. You know what critical hits do? One extra attack's worth of damage (or sometimes a bit less).

How is doing a single attack's worth of damage to an ally not the inverse of doing a single attack's worth of damage to an enemy?

OldTrees1
2020-10-21, 07:21 PM
We might be having a terminology failure then. In my mind fumbles are synonymous with degrees of failure; in effect, a normal failure means nothing happens, a fumble means you fail so badly you make the situation worse.

How do you differentiate the two?


How to differentiate? Consider skill checks for a moment.

A kid in gym class has a +2 to acrobatics.
A gymnast has a +12 to acrobatics.
The DC for climbing this rope is DC 10.

Fumble
Fumble: If either of them rolls a nat 1, they fail, and have extra fumbling consequences.
The kid has 5% chance of a fumble, 30% of a fail, and a 65% chance to succeed.
The gymnast has a 5% chance of a fumble, and a 95% chance to succeed.

Degrees of failure
Degree of failure. Fail the DC by 5 or more and get extra consequences.
The kid has 15% chance of a extra bad fail, 20% of a fail, and a 65% chance to succeed.
The gymnast has a 100% chance to succeed.

That is the difference. With Fumbles everyone is equally incompetent per task, which means the experts get the extra bad consequences more per second than the amateurs. With Degrees of failure the consequences are tied to your performance, which means experts get the extra bad consequences less than amateurs.

Talakeal
2020-10-21, 07:46 PM
How to differentiate? Consider skill checks for a moment.

A kid in gym class has a +2 to acrobatics.
A gymnast has a +12 to acrobatics.
The DC for climbing this rope is DC 10.

Fumble
Fumble: If either of them rolls a nat 1, they fail, and have extra fumbling consequences.
The kid has 5% chance of a fumble, 30% of a fail, and a 65% chance to succeed.
The gymnast has a 5% chance of a fumble, and a 95% chance to succeed.

Degrees of failure
Degree of failure. Fail the DC by 5 or more and get extra consequences.
The kid has 15% chance of a extra bad fail, 20% of a fail, and a 65% chance to succeed.
The gymnast has a 100% chance to succeed.

That is the difference. With Fumbles everyone is equally incompetent per task, which means the experts get the extra bad consequences more per second than the amateurs. With Degrees of failure the consequences are tied to your performance, which means experts get the extra bad consequences less than amateurs.

So what games actually have rules for "fumbles" by that definition?

I don't think I have ever played one that meets that definition.

OldTrees1
2020-10-21, 07:55 PM
So what games actually have rules for "fumbles" by that definition?

I don't think I have ever played one that meets that definition.

D&D... :smallconfused:

PS: I gave explanatory examples, not definitions. Is that the issue? Nah, you can handle explanatory examples.

icefractal
2020-10-21, 09:13 PM
How is doing a single attack's worth of damage to an ally not the inverse of doing a single attack's worth of damage to an enemy?The PCs damage and the enemy's damage are often not the same, for one thing. Also, most fumble mechanics I've seen make it an auto-hit, ignoring that said ally might very well have better defenses.

If a critical hit let you say "Instead of this goblin I'm attacking, the enemy caster in the back with the Mirror Image spell takes auto-damage" that might be more equivalent.


So what games actually have rules for "fumbles" by that definition?

I don't think I have ever played one that meets that definition.I'm going to turn that around - what games are you talking about that have these "good fumbles"? Because I know this isn't a D&D-specific forum, but most people in this thread are talking about D&D, and I have no idea what games you're referencing.

Satinavian
2020-10-22, 01:28 AM
So what games actually have rules for "fumbles" by that definition?

I don't think I have ever played one that meets that definition.D&D has at least autofail for any rolled one with attacks and saves regardless of DC or bonus. And there are lots of variations that extend that to skills or add even worse consequences.

TDE has 0.7% chance for every roll. Shadowrun has in all editions fumble rules and chances that are a complicated function of the number of dice used but ignore difficulty otherwise. Splittermondhas 3% over the board but at least provides a play-it-safe option for avoiding any fumble chance for lower overall results. And i could go on and on but admittedly can't remember all the exact chances for the various systems.

Systems without fumble rules are rare compared with systems that have them imho.



Degree of failure seems to be something that has become more popular in the last decade in game design as far as i can see. People did handwave extra bad results for extra bad rolls before but it rarely had a firm place in the rules.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-22, 09:38 AM
I've informally done a few different types of rolls:

Binary: roll as normal. Succeed or fail. No reward for rolling especially well, no extra punishment for exceptionally poor. Or at most a purely descriptive "great success" or "great failure". Note: Automatic failure on rolling a 1 (5e D&D's Critical Miss) falls under this category. Yes, you miss, but no other effects. This is my default because it's really easy.

Graduated Success and/or failure: Some kind of difference for rolling better and/or worse. A critical hit (double dice) falls under this category, but there's lots of options here. Most common (outside of attack rolls) for social checks. This covers what most people call degrees of success and failure.

Degrees of success: I've always used that term (probably non-standardly) to mean "you can't really fail, but you're rolling to see how much you get". Most of my knowledge checks are like this. You always know something, but a good roll can give you more/hidden information. Picking locks is also this way--the roll is to see how long it takes, not whether you succeed. Because if you can retry it, you're going to succeed sooner or later.

Degrees of failure: Also non-standard. This is when you can't succeed and I could just say "no, you fail", but there are a range of possible consequences. So you're rolling to see whether you can get a less-bad consequence. Ie: no matter what you say, the king is going to deny your request (because you're asking for something he won't do no matter what). But if you roll well, he'll laugh it off and kick you out, where if you roll poorly he'll try to have you arrested. That sort of thing.

Talakeal
2020-10-22, 09:52 AM
D&D... :smallconfused:

If you are trying to misunderstand, you will surely succeed.

PS: I gave explanatory examples, not definitions. Is that the issue? Nah, you can handle explanatory examples.

Maybe not, I tend to take people very literally.

When people give me anecdotes and examples, I tend to focus on the wrong thing.



The PCs damage and the enemy's damage are often not the same, for one thing. Also, most fumble mechanics I've seen make it an auto-hit, ignoring that said ally might very well have better defenses.

I am not sure if it possible to perfectly mirror rules, but imo, an enemy takes extra damage equal to your normal damage, and an ally takes extra damage equal to your normal damage are about as mathematically symmetrical as possible, far more so than something like making you miss your next turn.

The ally might have worse defenses as well, especially considering they are likely not going to expecting a friendly fire accident and thus not actively defending against it like they would an enemy blow.

From a simplicity and mathematical symmetry though, once you have confirmed a critical hit, you will do an extra attacks worth of damage, likewise once you have confirmed a fumble (and games should have confirmation rolls for fumbles) you will do an extra attacks worth of damage is about as straightforward as you can get.


I'm going to turn that around - what games are you talking about that have these "good fumbles"? Because I know this isn't a D&D-specific forum, but most people in this thread are talking about D&D, and I have no idea what games you're referencing.

Ok, so I typically define "fumble" as something where you roll so poorly you make the situation worse than if you had done nothing at all.

Of the games I am familiar with:

AD&D had an optional rule called fumble where if you roll a natural 1 on an attack you lose your next turn.

3.X had the same optional rule, but added a DC 10 dex check to avoid the consequences and gave the DM latitude to change the result. It also had an optional rule called critical failure where if you roll a natural 1 on a skill test you roll again to confirm your failure for something bad happens. I think this is the distinction most people on this forum use?

Shadowrun has glitches where if half your dice pool or more come up natural 1s something bad happens.

Most White Wolf games have botches where something bad happens if either you have more natural 1's than successes or you have natural ones and no successes, depending on the edition.

Most d100 games have something bad happen if you fail while rolling doubles or roll a natural 00. The two I have most recently played, Zweihander and Delta green, call this mechanic critical failure and fumble respectively.

Pathfinder, iirc, does not have fumbles in the rule book, but sells an optional deck of fumble cards which you draw if you roll a natural 1 and then confirm the miss, and suffer whatever whacky mishap the card says.

Pathfinder two has the worst degree of failure if you fail a roll by 10 or more, and it uses both the terms Critical Failure and Fumble to describe this.



IMO AD&D and attacks in 3.X are the only ones where character skill doesn't help, and I agree that the full attack action increasing your chance to fumble as you gain levels is bad design. I also think that the d100 mechanic, while elegant, is a bit too frequent and random for my tastes.

But yeah, if your definition of fumble relies on it being regardless of skill, that seems to be a minority of systems (and not a definition shared by game designers as both Delta Green and Pathfinder explicitly use the term fumble for things that are dependent upon character skill) than I agree with you that they are bad and the game is probably better off without them.


But when I initially brought them up, it was in a statement about players who didn't like them because they made their character look bad and took that as a blow to their pride.

Kardwill
2020-10-22, 10:24 AM
D&D... :smallconfused:

Which one, though? Most D&D edition I GM'd have "autofail on a 1", but no critical failure rules in the rulebook. Quite often, the presence of fumbles in a D&D (or many other) game is a houserule decided by the DM who "imported" them from another game like the Basic system (Runequest and Call of Chtulhu), or from another GM.

And I think it's a BAD houserule. In many cases, it's either because the GM is unwilling to have failures that have impact, or to diminish chaos/unpredictability in the game ("Oh, you failed? Err, okay, at least it was not a fumble, so you can reroll later") or the need to have an excuse to make fun of the player ("Sure, I described your paladin as an idiotic buffoon who throws his sword away, but it's because you rolled a fumble. Not my fault!")

OldTrees1
2020-10-22, 11:04 AM
Maybe not, I tend to take people very literally.

When people give me anecdotes and examples, I tend to focus on the wrong thing.

I am going to stick with examples but I will explain those examples a bit more:
If rolling a natural 1 has an extra consequence (even if just an automatic fail regardless of total), that is an example of a fumble mechanic.
If failing the DC by X or more results in extra consequences than a normal fail, that is an example of degrees of failure.

So, if you want to avoid fumbles, don't check the raw number on the die, check their total vs the DC. That is a good rule of thumb.

For dice pool systems where your dice pool size is based on your skill, it gets a bit dicier.


But when I initially brought them up, it was in a statement about players who didn't like them because they made their character look bad and took that as a blow to their pride.

You can have that problem with degrees of failure, but it is less prone to that issue than fumbles. Fumbles decide to treat the character as if they were bad regardless of whether they were or not. Excessive degrees of failure can make the character look bad. If failing to climb a wall by 1 point meant a nearby country got nuked, that would be excessive.


Which one, though? Most D&D edition I GM'd have "autofail on a 1", but no critical failure rules in the rulebook. Quite often, the presence of fumbles in a D&D (or many other) game is a houserule decided by the DM who "imported" them from another game like the Basic system (Runequest and Call of Chtulhu), or from another GM.

And I think it's a BAD houserule. In many cases, it's either because the GM is unwilling to have failures that have impact, or to diminish chaos/unpredictability in the game ("Oh, you failed? Err, okay, at least it was not a fumble, so you can reroll later") or the need to have an excuse to make fun of the player ("Sure, I described your paladin as an idiotic buffoon who throws his sword away, but it's because you rolled a fumble. Not my fault!")

The autofail on a nat 1 is a fumble mechanic, although the term is more commonly used to describe more severe rules/houserules.
5E has fumble rules for death saves (nat 1 = 2 fails).

GrayDeath
2020-10-22, 12:00 PM
Oh, no, that's not what I meant either.

I meant most players, OOC, resent an NPC who tells their character what to do, and their character likely also resents that NPC IC.

Going to read the rest of the thread, but first, let me answer this:

Doing a Capture/Prison Scenario depends on the PLAYERS being aware that it hapüpens (when the Adventure starts with it).
Thats the only way you can expect it to be accepted. And the only way I would do it at all.

Then there are (sadly many of the 90ies) the "Characters are captured/Coerced to Do X, because Plot.
Thats what many a player, including myself, abhors. It removes agency, it is often unecessary, it is expected to work by fiat or so laughably overwhelming numbers the rest of the adventure makes much less sense.

These things CAN, if you trust your DM, be at least done better (you still mostly get to point the Missiles that are the players exactly qwhere you want) if youa dapt the scenario very well to the preexisting Characters.


An example from my personal experience.

This happened in a group where we had been palying the same Characters for a huge Module and some elsser Adventures. Comparing to D&D we were around level 10-12, ergo we where well known (most of that my Wizard who had reinvented an ancient, superior, way to cast certain spells and just taught the Mage Guild that, receiving much WOW), we were respected (more in case of the War Mage with a Captains poatent in the alrgest army of the continent, less so in case of the Thief God Priest that officially was only a very rich trader).

And then the Adventure demandss the largest Countries "Secret Police" to arrest you on trumped up charges, and only offer you 2 ways out: 5 years of prison (and they have antimagic prisons) or following the Army as "secret agents" under a gaes to follow their orders.

That was the original Adventures way to do it.

However, aside from the shady assassin, all of our Characters actually had easy ways out.
The Captain was well known and repsected and knew 2 generals, the "Trader" could ahve bribed ANY judge, and my Wizard was both easily powerful enough to simply teleport away and actually a "Big Guy" of the Mag guild.

So our DM, who aside from a slightly too big admiration of "really hard encounters" was excvellent, adapted as follows:
The trader got a 5 year Tax Exemption, the shady assassin got his "you cant prove it" activities removed, the Captain promised a promotion to Colonel, and my Wizard offered a removal of the (partially stupid, partially sense making) restrictions on what Wizards were allowed to own/wear (Weapons and a castle in this case).

And voila, you ahve the exact same result, but your Players will not (unless they are idiots^^) make a fuss.

GrayDeath
2020-10-22, 01:22 PM
1: They increases verisimilitude and realism.
2: They increases variety and introduces a bit of novelty.
3: They provides mathematical balance to critical successes.
4: They give the Game Master a great tool to alter the mood (I think this is the reason why most people object to them)

Disagree on 1, 2 is correct, if "something unexpected hcan happen any time" is something you want (none of my palyers/DM`s does, unless we play a purely fun, Cracky Beer and Pretzel round^^), dont like critical/Autosuccesses either, I much prefer smooth degrees of success and faiulure.
4 is true (if you replace "great" with "in some situations adequate"^^), but not something I enjoy (or see a need for).


What makes me, and most people I ahve talked in eprson about it, dislike fumble rules are the following:

1.: No (or not enough, or in some cases invererse!") adaption of the degree of likeliness to fumble depending on how competent you are.

That includes things like "nat 1" or "2 nat 20" or "if half your rolled dice are 1" and similar.

It makes no difference if youa re Reed Richards doing routine maintance on the Fantasticar, or me trying to wrap my head around a higher Quamntum mechanics equation, if either of us rolls one of the above, we fumble.

I dont think I have to explain why that is bad Design?


Now if we are talking "bad things start to happen if you fail by 5 and more, and if you fail by 11 and more the worst logically possible thing happens" then I am all for it.
This truly serves as a reminder not to try your hand at things you are not competent at (which in my view is what many SAY fumbles do, but they rarely achieve).

Sorry for the double post, wanted to make a clear distinction between the 2 things I focussed on.

Talakeal
2020-10-22, 02:03 PM
Disagree on 1

It still blows my mind how people can say this. I seriously don't know how people think that a world where nobody ever makes a mistake is more realistic.


What makes me, and most people I ahve talked in eprson about it, dislike fumble rules are the following:

1.: No (or not enough, or in some cases inverses!") adaption of the degree of likeliness to fumble depending on how competent you are.

That includes things like "nat 1" or "2 nat 20" or "if half your rolled dice are 1" and similar.

It makes no difference if youa re Reed Richards doing routine maintained on the Fantasticar, or me trying to wrap my head around a higher Quantum mechanics equation, if either of us rolls one of the above, we fumble.

I don't think I have to explain why that is bad Design?

I agree that excessively random fumbles are a bad implementation of a solid concept.

The only system I have seen where player skill / difficulty doesn't matter is the AD&D / 3E implementation where it is just "if you roll a 1". But, do keep in mind, this is an optional rule that hasn't really been fleshed out in over thirty years and is no longer included in modern editions afaik.

In all of the other systems I have seen, player skill matters. For example, in the Shadowrun example above, the size of your dice pool is determined by your skill, and as the dice pool gets larger the chance of rolling half ones gets exponentially smaller. I believe that the tasks difficulty also factors into the dice pool size (I know it does in NWoD) but I don't recall Shadowrun well enough to verify.



Now if we are talking "bad things start to happen if you fail by 5 and more, and if you fail by 11 and more the worst logically possible thing happens" then I am all for it.
This truly serves as a reminder not to try your hand at things you are not competent at (which in my view is what many SAY fumbles do, but they rarely achieve).

Sorry for the double post, wanted to make a clear distinction between the 2 things I focussed on.

I agree.

That being said, a lot of people seem to dislike ANY implementation of fumbles because it makes their character look bad, which was really what I was trying to address.

GrayDeath
2020-10-22, 02:37 PM
It still blows my mind how people can say this. I seriously don't know how people think that a world where nobody ever makes a mistake is more realistic.


And I cant for the heck of it understand how someone equates Fumble Rules with the ONLY valid way of "people make mistakes".

Its simply the worst, least detailed and most annoying (and hence most noticable?^^) way to implement them.

As an example: The System I built with another Long Time Player is much less random than most, but in contrast punishes having low skills/Attributes much earlier than msot.

it is, in its core, a System where you want to face an enemy in an area where your ability outstrips his, so that he makes mistakes, for you to win.

So Im not saying i dont want Characters to be able to make mistakes, rather the opposite, I just want it to have good, concise, nonslapstick, non "oh my, the randomness" Rules. ^^





I agree that excessively random fumbles are a bad implementation of a solid concept.

The only system I have seen where player skill / difficulty doesn't matter is the AD&D / 3E implementation where it is just "if you roll a 1". But, do keep in mind, this is an optional rule that hasn't really been fleshed out in over thirty years and is no longer included in modern editions afaik.

In all of the other systems I have seen, player skill matters. For example, in the Shadowrun example above, the size of your dice pool is determined by your skill, and as the dice pool gets larger the chance of rolling half ones gets exponentially smaller. I believe that the tasks difficulty also factors into the dice pool size (I know it does in NWoD) but I don't recall Shadowrun well enough to verify.


Sadly, no. White Wolfs original Vampire/Mage/etc Rules made it MORE likely to fail catastrophically as you got more dice.
Because rolled ones "ate" rolled Successes, and only having fails was ....lets just say mostly deadly, and no fun whatsoever.

As for SR: Nope. lets assume you roll for standard difficulty, ergo must roll a 4 for a success.
Lets say you have 4, 6 or 10 Dice.

Each Dice has a chance of 1/6 to show only a one. That does in no way change as you roll more dice, and since statistics does not have a memory, while you are more likely to succeed, you are just as likely to fumble (not linearly, no, so overall its still coming ahead a bit, but xyou shouldnt be almost/just as likely to fumble if you are better, but be able to almost totally ignore the chance, so yeah, I dont like em fumblings^^).

Also, please for the love of all people arguing with you, stop assuming that what you deem "logical and making sense" has in any way form or shape effects on how other people see it.

it will help you avoid stuff like this thread once you realize that just about anyone can (and will^^) see things differently than you.

Once you internalized that, and try to go at a "imagined" problem totally fresh, often (not always, there are people that are simply totally incompatible regarding their preferences :) ) it will become much easier to see where people see things differently, and why, and let us avoid misunderstandings.

Additionally, PLAYER SKill should never have any influence over how good their Characters Roll, but I know I am one of the few who are always tripped up by people making that mixup. ^^






I agree.

That being said, a lot of people seem to dislike ANY implementation of fumbles because it makes their character look bad, which was really what I was trying to address.


Talakael, your Posts, this thread less so than your earlier ones but still, tend to come across alà "I have looked at dozens of systems, they all do it the way I see it, and if people dont see it that way, I will argue semantics/etc until they do".

I am quite sure you are not doing that intentionally, but please, just try to take a few steps back, take a deep breath, and then recheck the many many assumptions you make, and you will understand why pother people beg to differ (I hope I am not coming across to aggressively, I was afflicted by a similar blindness to other options/need to explain that I was right in my first 2-3 years of DMing, and it cost me a friend...).

Honestly, simply being of the opinion that YOU like/need something does never equal "people should need/like/Understand that".
Sadly, or e all would have a much easier time getting along.




Summing it up:

I prefer systems similar to this:

Add Skill to Ability, roll 3D6 on top of that, compare to Target number/opposing Roll.
1-4: normal Success, 5-9 great Success, 10-12: fantastic Success, 13+: devastating/epic success

and

failire -1 to -4: normal, you simply dont accomplish what you tried, -5 to -10: big failure. You dont accomplish what you intended and will likely ruin the project/be worse of next turn in the battle, 11+: You dont want to fail THIS hard.

But if Icant play in a syystem I made, then i prefer Systems that do not offer "worse failure" or "Autofailure" (or autosuccess for that matter) at all.

Talakeal
2020-10-22, 03:35 PM
And I cant for the heck of it understand how someone equates Fumble Rules with the ONLY valid way of "people make mistakes".

Its simply the worst, least detailed and most annoying (and hence most noticable?^^) way to implement them.

As an example: The System I built with another Long Time Player is much less random than most, but in contrast punishes having low skills/Attributes much earlier than msot.

it is, in its core, a System where you want to face an enemy in an area where your ability outstrips his, so that he makes mistakes, for you to win.

So Im not saying i dont want Characters to be able to make mistakes, rather the opposite, I just want it to have good, concise, nonslapstick, non "oh my, the randomness" Rules. ^^

Could you please give some examples?

At the end of the day, most RPG's use dice as a resolution mechanic, so I can't think of a good way to implement in character mistakes that don't ultimately come down to a dice roll, but I would love to hear about it.


Sadly, no. White Wolfs original Vampire/Mage/etc Rules made it MORE likely to fail catastrophically as you got more dice.
Because rolled ones "ate" rolled Successes, and only having fails was ....lets just say mostly deadly, and no fun whatsoever.

As for SR: Nope. lets assume you roll for standard difficulty, ergo must roll a 4 for a success.
Lets say you have 4, 6 or 10 Dice.

Each Dice has a chance of 1/6 to show only a one. That does in no way change as you roll more dice, and since statistics does not have a memory, while you are more likely to succeed, you are just as likely to fumble (not linearly, no, so overall its still coming ahead a bit, but xyou shouldnt be almost/just as likely to fumble if you are better, but be able to almost totally ignore the chance, so yeah, I dont like em fumblings^^).

I'm sorry, but that's just mathematically incorrect.

If you run the numbers, you will find that larger dice pools are less likely to fumble in both systems, unless of course you get into a situation where the target number is 6 in SR or 10 in WoD (the latter of which they removed as a possibility in later editions).


Talakael, your Posts, this thread less so than your earlier ones but still, tend to come across alà "I have looked at dozens of systems, they all do it the way I see it, and if people dont see it that way, I will argue semantics/etc until they do".

I am quite sure you are not doing that intentionally, but please, just try to take a few steps back, take a deep breath, and then recheck the many many assumptions you make, and you will understand why pother people beg to differ (I hope I am not coming across to aggressively, I was afflicted by a similar blindness to other options/need to explain that I was right in my first 2-3 years of DMing, and it cost me a friend...).

Honestly, simply being of the opinion that YOU like/need something does never equal "people should need/like/Understand that".
Sadly, or e all would have a much easier time getting along.

I can't speak for other threads, but I am not the one arguing semantics here.

People were telling me that I was using "fumbles" wrong and that it is distinct from degrees of failure, and then asked me what games I am playing, and so I dug through my RPG collection to provide evidence for my position.



I prefer systems similar to this:

Add Skill to Ability, roll 3D6 on top of that, compare to Target number/opposing Roll.
1-4: normal Success, 5-9 great Success, 10-12: fantastic Success, 13+: devastating/epic success

and

failire -1 to -4: normal, you simply dont accomplish what you tried, -5 to -10: big failure. You dont accomplish what you intended and will likely ruin the project/be worse of next turn in the battle, 11+: You dont want to fail THIS hard.

But if I cant play in a system I made, then i prefer Systems that do not offer "worse failure" or "Autofailure" (or autosuccess for that matter) at all.


That is pretty damn close to my preference is as well, which is why I am kind of confused about why you are disagreeing with me so vehemently.

GrayDeath
2020-10-22, 03:47 PM
Because you are treating Fumbles, a specific way to rule very specific (and usually either slapsticky or very deadly) way of ABSOLUTE failures that in most systems do not appear once you´ve failed a roll by massive amounts, but on a set rolled number (or multiples of these) as "the way to implement any mistakes characters may make".
And react with overblown "Do you allw ant your palyers to always suceed" rethoric when people dont agree with that.

Imagine just saying "Of the ways to implement degrees of failure, I kind of like fumbles", which I think is what you actually intended to say, woulkd maybe make SOME people still argue with you, or ask why, but most of the thread wouldnt have been necessary.


As for the math, I`m tired. I`ll answer that part tomorrow or at the weekend.

Lets jsut sum up that "it is slightly less likely to totally fail when your Dice number almost doubles" is not what I see as an even remotely In-world logical or at all good way of ruling it.
But then again, there are reasons SR and White WOlf Systems have had at elast 2 total overhauls since the mechanics we are discussing, so ^^

icefractal
2020-10-22, 04:25 PM
4: They give the Game Master a great tool to alter the mood (I think this is the reason why most people object to them)
This one I don't get, at all.

Fumbles are random, even when they're based on margin of failure. They're just as likely to go against the mood the GM is trying for as to help it.

A tavern brawl! Some wacky fumbles would be great here! ... but nobody rolls one.
An abandoned prison where you've been building up a creepy atmosphere. The unjustly-hanged revenant who straggled everyone else finally makes his appearance ... and promptly stumbles and falls down the stairs.

Is the point that you can make the game more slapstick when the players aren't interested in that?
Well for one thing, it would be better to get on the same page OOC.
But for another, you don't need fumbles for that, just make the foes pixies / gremlins / poltergeists or whatnot.



It still blows my mind how people can say this. I seriously don't know how people think that a world where nobody ever makes a mistake is more realistic.IRL, people do get eaten by sharks. It would be incorrect to say that it never happens. On the other hand, it happens very rarely (one fatality per two years in the US, for example).

So a game where you have 0% chance to be eaten by a shark while swimming at the beach wouldn't be quite accurate, but it would be a lot more accurate than one where 5% or even 1% of people who swim at the beach get eaten by sharks.

If a system produces results like "a squad of soldiers shooting from cover will end up killing most of themselves from friendly fire in ten minutes" or "about 5% of airline flights crash", then I would say that's less accurate than "people never fail spectacularly, just ordinarily".

ExLibrisMortis
2020-10-22, 04:43 PM
And I cant for the heck of it understand how someone equates Fumble Rules with the ONLY valid way of "people make mistakes".
I'm going to echo this.

Any time a given creature gets hit by an attack, they have, in a sense, "made a mistake". Any time a creature misses with an attack, they have likewise "made a mistake". Any roll that doesn't succeed as much as the average, doing-it-properly result (e.g. a roll of 5 compared to take 10) could be considered a "mistake", even though it might not be bad enough to ruin everything. I don't understand why you wouldn't just narrate those mistakes when the mood calls for it, instead of introducing a new mechanic that, as icefractal notes, will likely work against you as often as it works with you.

You can rename "failure" to "mistake", but that's just labelling. Fact is, any game that allows failure already has a "people make mistakes" mechanic.

Darth Credence
2020-10-22, 05:15 PM
The only time the odds get worse when rolling more dice is when you go from even to odd (or odd to even, if you round up). Otherwise, they get better.
Let's say you are using six sided dice, and you always have even numbers. With two dice, you need one failure. The possible combinations of dice are:
[1][1], [1][2], [1][3], [1][4], [1][5], [1][6],
[2][1], [2][2], [2][3], [2][4], [2][5], [2][6],
[3][1], [3][2], [3][3], [3][4], [3][5], [3][6],
[4][1], [4][2], [4][3], [4][4], [4][5], [4][6],
[5][1], [5][2], [5][3], [5][4], [5][5], [5][6],
[6][1], [6][2], [6][3], [6][4], [6][5], [6][6].
11/36 give you half of them as 1s, or a 30.6% chance of getting half of the dice as 1s.

Make the same table for 4d6, and you find that 171 out of 1296 possible combinations give half or more 1s, or 13.2%.

Again, for 6d6, and it is 2906 out of 46656 possible combinations, or a 6.2% chance. 3.1% for 8d6, 1.5% for 10d6, and so on.
Double the dice, slightly less than half as likely to get half of the dice as a 1.

If one were using 20 sided dice, then those numbers are 2d20=9.75%, 4d20=1.4%, 6d20=0.22%, 8d20=0.037%, and 10d20=0.006%.
These are pretty big changes in likelihood as we increase the number of dice.

Edit - I have no dog in the fight of fumbles - just doing the math of how the likelihood of half of the dice being a 1 changes with more dice. And I did not make tables for everything, I used the binomial distribution function.

OldTrees1
2020-10-22, 05:54 PM
just doing the math of how the likelihood of half of the dice being a 1 changes with more dice. And I did not make tables for everything, I used the binomial distribution function.

I appreciate the math. Apparently there is more context http://www.wetware80.net/dice/wod-old-diceroller.html

So for extra math fun:
X d10s. For each die
1: +1 fail, +1 one
2 to X-1: +1 fail
X to 10: +1 success
If ones > success => Botch
If ones + fails > successes => Fail

So your conclusion, applies to a d6 version of the botch math. I think we can conclude it also applies to the d10 version too. But fails are a new wrinkle.

NigelWalmsley
2020-10-22, 07:11 PM
It still blows my mind how people can say this. I seriously don't know how people think that a world where nobody ever makes a mistake is more realistic.

It blows my mind that you seem to think "fumbles" are the only way to model mistakes. Why do you need a separate mechanic for "you failed because of a mistake" instead of "you failed because of bad luck" or "you failed because the task was really hard". If you roll a 12 when you need a 15 or three hits when you need five, you could say that that was a "mistake" in-world if that happened to fit with the story and circumstances. Why do we need anything more than that?

Talakeal
2020-10-22, 07:50 PM
On my phone, so forgive my inability to chop up the quotes properly.


This one I don't get, at all.

Fumbles are random, even when they're based on margin of failure. They're just as likely to go against the mood the GM is trying for as to help it.

A tavern brawl! Some wacky fumbles would be great here! ... but nobody rolls one.
An abandoned prison where you've been building up a creepy atmosphere. The unjustly-hanged revenant who straggled everyone else finally makes his appearance ... and promptly stumbles and falls down the stairs.

Is the point that you can make the game more slapstick when the players aren't interested in that?
Well for one thing, it would be better to get on the same page OOC.
But for another, you don't need fumbles for that, just make the foes pixies / gremlins / poltergeists or whatnot.


IRL, people do get eaten by sharks. It would be incorrect to say that it never happens. On the other hand, it happens very rarely (one fatality per two years in the US, for example).

So a game where you have 0% chance to be eaten by a shark while swimming at the beach wouldn't be quite accurate, but it would be a lot more accurate than one where 5% or even 1% of people who swim at the beach get eaten by sharks.

If a system produces results like "a squad of soldiers shooting from cover will end up killing most of themselves from friendly fire in ten minutes" or "about 5% of airline flights crash", then I would say that's less accurate than "people never fail spectacularly, just ordinarily".

Its not about fighting for tonal control with the players or making the game a comedy.

Look, I take gaming pretty seriously, and I would give you ten to one odds that when I sit down to a gaming table I want a comedy game less than anyone else at the table. But that doesn't mean I don’t enjoy an occasional laugh.

Not that fumbles are only good for comedy, they are a gray area in the rules that allows the DM to ramp the tension up or down as they see fit, and can introduce most any emotion.

As for the sharks thing, I agree that finding a good ratio is important, and many systems fail at that and would be better off without fumbles. But I was merely asked what are some reasons to include fumbles, not lets debate the exact ratio of fumbles and weigh the pros vs the cons.




I'm going to echo this.

Any time a given creature gets hit by an attack, they have, in a sense, "made a mistake". Any time a creature misses with an attack, they have likewise "made a mistake". Any roll that doesn't succeed as much as the average, doing-it-properly result (e.g. a roll of 5 compared to take 10) could be considered a "mistake", even though it might not be bad enough to ruin everything. I don't understand why you wouldn't just narrate those mistakes when the mood calls for it, instead of introducing a new mechanic that, as icefractal notes, will likely work against you as often as it works with you.

You can rename "failure" to "mistake", but that's just labelling. Fact is, any game that allows failure already has a "people make mistakes" mechanic.

Maybe I shouldn't have said made a mistake, thats inaccurate and potentially misleading.

Replace it with “potentially make the situation worse” or “have multiple degrees of failure”.


Because you are treating Fumbles, a specific way to rule very specific (and usually either slapsticky or very deadly) way of ABSOLUTE failures that in most systems do not appear once you´ve failed a roll by massive amounts, but on a set rolled number (or multiples of these) as "the way to implement any mistakes characters may make".

And react with overblown "Do you allw ant your palyers to always suceed" rethoric when people dont agree with that.

Imagine just saying "Of the ways to implement degrees of failure, I kind of like fumbles", which I think is what you actually intended to say, woulkd maybe make SOME people still argue with you, or ask why, but most of the thread wouldnt have been necessary.

Ok, I never said players shouldn't ever fail. First off, fumbles apply to NPCs as well, second, its about degrees of success / failure, not passing vs. failing.

What you call “semantic arguments” I call clarifying terms. In my mind, fumble and degrees of failure are synonymous, and you (and other posters) seem to imply that there is a distinction, and I really want to understand the distinction.

I am legitimately not being obtuse, for me the words are synonymous, and this argument is like saying “I like sofas, just nit when they are couches” to me.

Talakeal
2020-10-22, 07:58 PM
It blows my mind that you seem to think "fumbles" are the only way to model mistakes. Why do you need a separate mechanic for "you failed because of a mistake" instead of "you failed because of bad luck" or "you failed because the task was really hard". If you roll a 12 when you need a 15 or three hits when you need five, you could say that that was a "mistake" in-world if that happened to fit with the story and circumstances. Why do we need anything more than that?

I shouldn't have said mistake. That was a mistake :)

I meant make a situation worse, whether this is due to incompetence, external circumstance, dumb luck, or some combination of the above isn't really my concern.

NigelWalmsley
2020-10-22, 08:51 PM
I meant make a situation worse, whether this is due to incompetence, external circumstance, dumb luck, or some combination of the above isn't really my concern.

Why do you need a special mechanic for that? Let alone one that is, as fumbles typically are, baked into the core mechanics of the game. Look at something like a combat encounter. It's easy to imagine ways that people might make things worse by simply making tactical decisions that don't work out or are based on poor information, without ever need to invoke "fumbles".

Talakeal
2020-10-22, 09:15 PM
Why do you need a special mechanic for that? Let alone one that is, as fumbles typically are, baked into the core mechanics of the game. Look at something like a combat encounter. It's easy to imagine ways that people might make things worse by simply making tactical decisions that don't work out or are based on poor information, without ever need to invoke "fumbles".

You don’t need them, I just prefer them because:



1: They increases verisimilitude and realism.
2: They increases variety and introduces a bit of novelty.
3: They provides mathematical balance to critical successes.
4: They give the Game Master a great tool to alter the mood (I think this is the reason why most people object to them).

NigelWalmsley
2020-10-22, 09:34 PM
You don’t need them, I just prefer them because:

Yes. I saw that post earlier. But we where talking about wether they actually do those things. In this case, about whether having individual tasks having appreciable rates of catastrophic failure was a good or necessary tool for increasing verisimilitude. It seems to me that it is not, and in fact that there are many cases where we would want to decrease failure rates to increase verisimilitude. Think about the tasks you do in your daily life. How many of them have a real chance of "failure", let alone catastrophic setbacks? When you go to put on your shoes in the morning, do you end up not wearing pants once a month? Do you end up destroying a meal a week in a horrible culinary mishap?

KineticDiplomat
2020-10-22, 10:52 PM
Of course, most reasonably risk free things are not what we roll dice for in RPGs. We don’t roll dice to go up the stairs, so there is a 0% chance of breaking your neck on that event.

What we do roll dice for is dangerous and unpredictable things - things where there are potential for significantly bad events beyond just “not succeeding”. If you’re trying to scale the seaside cliffs barehanded, there are possible consequences besides “well, nope, have to find a different way”. And while not striking your opponent in combat is a failure, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that him getting his shield in the way is normal, but a bit of kriegsluck like your foot slipping on a loose stone which leaves you overextended might be a fumble.

zinycor
2020-10-22, 11:31 PM
Am pretty lost on this discussion. How do fumbles relate to mind control or prisoners again?

Satinavian
2020-10-23, 01:57 AM
What you call “semantic arguments” I call clarifying terms. In my mind, fumble and degrees of failure are synonymous, and you (and other posters) seem to imply that there is a distinction, and I really want to understand the distinction.

I am legitimately not being obtuse, for me the words are synonymous, and this argument is like saying “I like sofas, just nit when they are couches” to me.
Fumble rules rely only on the outcome of the dice roll. And depending on the system that usually means that difficulty is irrelevant for fumble chance (yes, that is true for all versions of Shadowrun as well) and that skill is irrelevant as well (this is not true for Shadowrun).

Degrees of failure don't care for the details of the dice roll, only about how much is missing to beat the DC or to reach the success. Obviously this takes automatically both difficulty and skill into account.

And yes, AD&Ds optional 1=fumble rule is a fumble rule, not a degree of failure rule. Because even a lv 20 fighter would miss a barnyard in 5% of cases and be distracted enough to lose another attack. That is probably why "fumble" is established as the word for automatic extrabad results for particular rolls.

And as far as i can telll, you are the only poster in this whole thread for whom fumbles and degrees of failure were synonymous.

That is likely because of the games you are familiar with. : That is a big list of fumble mechanics. But aside from certain WoD versions, those games all don't care much about difficulty when deciding if a fumble occurs.

It seems you have not yet played a single game with a proper degree of failure mechanic. Only games with fumbles. And now you are trying to use fumbles for something they are not good at.

Telok
2020-10-23, 02:00 AM
Am pretty lost on this discussion. How do fumbles relate to mind control or prisoners again?

I think it went to fumbles from spectacular failures from it taking a spectacular failure to get captured. I mean, I can see both sides and I've been in both.

In RL with computer programming if I push out an app patch without testing I could fix things that I didn't even know were wrong, I could fix what I was trying to fix, I could fix nothing, I could break the app and annoy all the users, and if I went really wrong maybe crash the whole server and frag the database (this is why we test things first). So the whole thing about degrees of success and failure is true, for some things. I really don't have any expectation of suddenly producing a five course banquet or blowing up my house when I'm just cooking some pasta and veg. Likewise an expert marksman is not expected to accidentally shoot the guy behind him at the range on a regular basis.

It comes down to a sort of range of variation in results. I can get a wider range of results writing a computer program than I can just driving 20 minutes to work in the morning or cooking dinner. Many "fumble" mechanics don't capture that. In fact the d20 system is probably about the worst way to try it because of the flat 5% chance per side thay crams everything into a narrow range where all results equally possible or impossible. Although some games from the 80's and early 90's obviously didn't have anyone check their math. You can royally screw up with any dice scheme.

I have, almost jokingly, suggested playing D&D combat using it's "social" rules. In pretty much any edition that would be... interesting. That could easily lead to imprisonment on a regular basis.

Satinavian
2020-10-23, 02:10 AM
An example from my personal experience.

This happened in a group where we had been palying the same Characters for a huge Module and some elsser Adventures. Comparing to D&D we were around level 10-12, ergo we where well known (most of that my Wizard who had reinvented an ancient, superior, way to cast certain spells and just taught the Mage Guild that, receiving much WOW), we were respected (more in case of the War Mage with a Captains poatent in the alrgest army of the continent, less so in case of the Thief God Priest that officially was only a very rich trader).

And then the Adventure demandss the largest Countries "Secret Police" to arrest you on trumped up charges, and only offer you 2 ways out: 5 years of prison (and they have antimagic prisons) or following the Army as "secret agents" under a gaes to follow their orders.

That was the original Adventures way to do it.

However, aside from the shady assassin, all of our Characters actually had easy ways out.
The Captain was well known and repsected and knew 2 generals, the "Trader" could ahve bribed ANY judge, and my Wizard was both easily powerful enough to simply teleport away and actually a "Big Guy" of the Mag guild.

So our DM, who aside from a slightly too big admiration of "really hard encounters" was excvellent, adapted as follows:
The trader got a 5 year Tax Exemption, the shady assassin got his "you cant prove it" activities removed, the Captain promised a promotion to Colonel, and my Wizard offered a removal of the (partially stupid, partially sense making) restrictions on what Wizards were allowed to own/wear (Weapons and a castle in this case).

And voila, you ahve the exact same result, but your Players will not (unless they are idiots^^) make a fuss.
Was it "Jahr des Greifen" ?

zinycor
2020-10-23, 08:28 AM
I think it went to fumbles from spectacular failures from it taking a spectacular failure to get captured. I mean, I can see both sides and I've been in both.

In RL with computer programming if I push out an app patch without testing I could fix things that I didn't even know were wrong, I could fix what I was trying to fix, I could fix nothing, I could break the app and annoy all the users, and if I went really wrong maybe crash the whole server and frag the database (this is why we test things first). So the whole thing about degrees of success and failure is true, for some things. I really don't have any expectation of suddenly producing a five course banquet or blowing up my house when I'm just cooking some pasta and veg. Likewise an expert marksman is not expected to accidentally shoot the guy behind him at the range on a regular basis.

It comes down to a sort of range of variation in results. I can get a wider range of results writing a computer program than I can just driving 20 minutes to work in the morning or cooking dinner. Many "fumble" mechanics don't capture that. In fact the d20 system is probably about the worst way to try it because of the flat 5% chance per side thay crams everything into a narrow range where all results equally possible or impossible. Although some games from the 80's and early 90's obviously didn't have anyone check their math. You can royally screw up with any dice scheme.

I have, almost jokingly, suggested playing D&D combat using it's "social" rules. In pretty much any edition that would be... interesting. That could easily lead to imprisonment on a regular basis.

Personally, I hate whenever a roll is the thing that leads to big consecuences and molds entire sessions. For me something such as a fumble is something that is very bothersome at the moment but not so horrible to change the way the campaign is going. For example, if you are shooting at someone and roll a 1, your weapon might jammed, but not more besides that.

For me all those disastrous consecuences are a better fit for bad choices the players take.

But, that very well might be because I play these games for the chance to make choices, die rolls are something I merely put up with.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-23, 09:39 AM
I think it went to fumbles from spectacular failures from it taking a spectacular failure to get captured. I mean, I can see both sides and I've been in both.

In RL with computer programming if I push out an app patch without testing I could fix things that I didn't even know were wrong, I could fix what I was trying to fix, I could fix nothing, I could break the app and annoy all the users, and if I went really wrong maybe crash the whole server and frag the database (this is why we test things first). So the whole thing about degrees of success and failure is true, for some things. I really don't have any expectation of suddenly producing a five course banquet or blowing up my house when I'm just cooking some pasta and veg. Likewise an expert marksman is not expected to accidentally shoot the guy behind him at the range on a regular basis.

It comes down to a sort of range of variation in results. I can get a wider range of results writing a computer program than I can just driving 20 minutes to work in the morning or cooking dinner. Many "fumble" mechanics don't capture that. In fact the d20 system is probably about the worst way to try it because of the flat 5% chance per side thay crams everything into a narrow range where all results equally possible or impossible. Although some games from the 80's and early 90's obviously didn't have anyone check their math. You can royally screw up with any dice scheme.

I have, almost jokingly, suggested playing D&D combat using it's "social" rules. In pretty much any edition that would be... interesting. That could easily lead to imprisonment on a regular basis.

For me, the dice rolls represent circumstances beyond your control. Of luck (and the other person's reactions, at least in the case of attack rolls). Pushing to prod without testing is a failure, to be sure. But it's not a failure of luck. It's an "I did the wrong thing" failure. Fumbles would be "5% of the time, even properly tested code frags the database for even the most skilled developer and the most robust system. Nothing you can do about it, no change possible. You're just out of luck based on the whims of the RNG." And that's bad. Now not all patches will work, but "not completely fix the problem" and "crash catastrophically" are two very different situations.

Regular automatic fails (5% of the time, your patch doesn't work because of things you couldn't control) only make sense in contested situations--sometimes the enemy gets a lucky block or zigs when you were expecting a zag. In cases where only luck is in play, only a slapstick game would (IMO) have luck have such a huge variance in outcomes.

Only roll for things that are carefully balanced between success and failure. Things that are destined to fail or destined to succeed should just do so. Degrees of success/failure are useful, because they allow skill to matter. But they're also more expensive (table-time and prep-time) to implement, since you have to first decide on those extra consequences and make them fit the situation[1] and then you have to implement the branching at table time and deal with the fallout. But that's often a cost worth bearing IMO.

I did have one "fumble" mechanic for a game that worked--a PC had acquired a special ability. When an opponent rolled a 1 on a saving throw vs one of their spells, a wand of wonder effect was triggered with the target as the center of the effect and all other effects decided randomly. It only rarely triggered, and the results were always something interesting. Including one that made it look like the target's head exploded into a fireball because he was insulted so badly (vicious mockery, rolled a 1, got the "fireball" result). Scorched the party, but he was the last enemy in a arena-style fight where showmanship was key. And that was certainly showy. This ability also fit the character--he was a goblin bard named Oopsie. The dice often have a sense of the dramatic IMX.

[1] IMO, these extra consequences, both good and bad, have to be carefully calibrated to the situation at hand. I've had too many crit hit/crit fail decks that resulted in absurdities because they didn't (and couldn't) take into account the facts on the ground beyond "making a ranged attack" vs "making a melee attack".

NigelWalmsley
2020-10-23, 10:06 AM
In RL with computer programming if I push out an app patch without testing I could fix things that I didn't even know were wrong, I could fix what I was trying to fix, I could fix nothing, I could break the app and annoy all the users, and if I went really wrong maybe crash the whole server and frag the database (this is why we test things first). So the whole thing about degrees of success and failure is true, for some things. I really don't have any expectation of suddenly producing a five course banquet or blowing up my house when I'm just cooking some pasta and veg. Likewise an expert marksman is not expected to accidentally shoot the guy behind him at the range on a regular basis.

But is that really something you'd model as a single Programming check? Maybe in a game like Vampire, where programming was your day job and the actual action was somewhere else, but in those cases having it be a binary "good release/bad release" is fine. However if programming is meant to be a major focus of the game, you wouldn't model an app release as a single Craft (Programming) check that might have fumble. It'd be an extended test, or series of related checks, or Skill Challenge with subtasks like "develop new feature", "update test suite", "check for regressions", and "push to servers". And then the individual successes or failures of those checks would contribute to an overall good or bad result. But you wouldn't want or need fumbles.

Telok
2020-10-23, 10:53 AM
How I'd actually model a coding job in a game mechanic would be with a dice pool or other bell curve producing system. Probably a system like roll X dice, keep Y (where Y is less than X) dice, sum the kept dice and add/subtract any special personal modifiers, compare the total to a DC based on task difficulty, using degrees of success/failure. For the actual task I'd do a programming roll, testing roll, modify bonuses or DC based on new knowledge, repeat. The actual stress/threat would come from the player having a limited amount of time (of course each attempt takes time) to produce working code or make a social interaction roll to explain and ask for more time. It would end up looking more like a variable time multi-roll challenge than a one-off roll.

With a failure rate less than 50% and no consequenses for trashing the test platform (well, actually additional time required to recover the test platform if it's a pretty spectacular failure) each iteration of attempt-then-test reduces the possibility of all types of failure on the final result. That's for a proper skilled coding project. If you have an emergency, no possible testing, and very limited time you could only get one roll. Then is it possible to get a result that's worse than doing nothing and automatically failing at the basic level.

Edit: I should stress that the baseline for this isn't a simple program. It's a mulitlayer integrated solution across three servers, two databases, multiple firewalls, additional security layers, and a small public-facing website.

Talakeal
2020-10-23, 11:12 AM
Personally, I hate whenever a roll is the thing that leads to big consecuences and molds entire sessions. For me something such as a fumble is something that is very bothersome at the moment but not so horrible to change the way the campaign is going. For example, if you are shooting at someone and roll a 1, your weapon might jammed, but not more besides that.

For me all those disastrous consecuences are a better fit for bad choices the players take.

But, that very well might be because I play these games for the chance to make choices, die rolls are something I merely put up with.


As someone said earlier, dice stop the game master from just dictating a story to the players.

I prefer the players, the game master, and the dice to all have roughly even impact over the final story


Am pretty lost on this discussion. How do fumbles relate to mind control or prisoners again?

I compared people who will not let their character get captured because it hurts their ego to people who don't like fumbles because it can make their character look bad.

Fumbles are one of those topics, like dmpcs, kender, or how modern d&d is like an mmo that people have very strong opinions about and can derail any thread. I should have known better :)


Fumble rules rely only on the outcome of the dice roll. And depending on the system that usually means that difficulty is irrelevant for fumble chance (yes, that is true for all versions of Shadowrun as well) and that skill is irrelevant as well (this is not true for Shadowrun).

Degrees of failure don't care for the details of the dice roll, only about how much is missing to beat the DC or to reach the success. Obviously this takes automatically both difficulty and skill into account.

And yes, AD&Ds optional 1=fumble rule is a fumble rule, not a degree of failure rule. Because even a lv 20 fighter would miss a barnyard in 5% of cases and be distracted enough to lose another attack. That is probably why "fumble" is established as the word for automatic extrabad results for particular rolls.

And as far as i can telll, you are the only poster in this whole thread for whom fumbles and degrees of failure were synonymous.

That is likely because of the games you are familiar with. : That is a big list of fumble mechanics. But aside from certain WoD versions, those games all don't care much about difficulty when deciding if a fumble occurs.

It seems you have not yet played a single game with a proper degree of failure mechanic. Only games with fumbles. And now you are trying to use fumbles for something they are not good at.


No, I almost exclusively play games with degree of failure mechanics, and much prefer them. I honestly think that you are better off not having any degree of failure rules at all than the outrageously random fumbles you get in D&D or PF.

The problem here is terminology, most games I am familiar with use the terms critical failure and fumble interchangeably; d100 systems alternate terminology from book to book and pathfinder second edition uses the terms interchangeably within the same book.

zinycor
2020-10-23, 11:36 AM
Anyway, leaving the fumble talk aside...

I believe that for most players, in order for them to accept their character to be a prisoner or be mind controlled, the GM has to convince them that this will be a fun and temporary adventure.

The GM has to be open and sincere on this, there are too many nightmare GMs for the player to just assume everything will be alright when relinquishing control.

NigelWalmsley
2020-10-23, 11:38 AM
I prefer the players, the game master, and the dice to all have roughly even impact over the final story

One of these things is not like others.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-23, 01:14 PM
One of these things is not like others.

Yeah. The dice are a tool. One without agency and without accountability. The DM (and the players) should use the dice to generate potential outcomes to influence the story (to resolve uncertainty about how the situation resolves), but the dice have no direct role in the story. They're a game UI issue, not a fiction-level thing. Unless your characters are playing dice.

GrayDeath
2020-10-23, 03:24 PM
Was it "Jahr des Greifen" ?

Yeah.

Got to be really interesting/we were able to find a lot to enjoy later on, but man was the start dumb for....just about any even remotely well known and NOT criminal Character.
And most of the beginning Army stuff was strange for us as well (given only one Character was truly focussed on anything remotely Rondrian and combat focussed,.....well^^)

Oh, you probably could have also gotten anyone not into civilization by dint of them not having contacts/knowledge how to resist in such a situation.

PS: thought you might know and play DSA/TDE given your Nick.

Arbane
2020-10-24, 11:59 PM
Of course, most reasonably risk free things are not what we roll dice for in RPGs. We don’t roll dice to go up the stairs, so there is a 0% chance of breaking your neck on that event.


Oh, sure, if you're some WIMP who doesn't play Rolemaster. :smallbiggrin:

ExLibrisMortis
2020-10-25, 09:34 AM
Yeah. The dice are a tool. One without agency and without accountability.
It can be useful to consider the dice, players, and DM as generalized "things with agency", as in actor-network theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93network_theory). I myself have never applied ANT to anything, but I know a few people with PhDs who have, and they all assure me it's very good.

Actants denote human and non-human actors, and in a network take the shape that they do by virtue of their relations with one another. It assumes that nothing lies outside the network of relations, and as noted above, suggests that there is no difference in the ability of technology, humans, animals, or other non-humans to act (and that there are only enacted alliances). As soon as an actor engages with an actor-network it too is caught up in the web of relations, and becomes part of the entelechy.
Note that "agency" does not imply "sentience" or "intentionality". The easiest way I've heard it explained is with speed bumps. Speed bumps are not sentient and do not "try" to do anything in the conventional sense. In terms of their behaviour and effect within a network, however, they very much act as if they try to slow down cars on the streets they're on. (Of course, the speed bump was put there by someone, which also has a place in ANT, but let's not go there. Once in place, the speed bump simply "acts".)

In the case of D&D, the dice definitely have agency, in that they change the behaviour of humans within the network. I would argue that dice change the story independently of the humans' intent, as well. Dice may not be part of the fiction, but they have a part in shaping the story that is on par with the players and DM (who are also not part of the fiction).

Quertus
2020-10-25, 11:14 AM
It can be useful to consider the dice, players, and DM as generalized "things with agency", as in actor-network theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93network_theory). I myself have never applied ANT to anything, but I know a few people with PhDs who have, and they all assure me it's very good.

Note that "agency" does not imply "sentience" or "intentionality". The easiest way I've heard it explained is with speed bumps. Speed bumps are not sentient and do not "try" to do anything in the conventional sense. In terms of their behaviour and effect within a network, however, they very much act as if they try to slow down cars on the streets they're on. (Of course, the speed bump was put there by someone, which also has a place in ANT, but let's not go there. Once in place, the speed bump simply "acts".)

In the case of D&D, the dice definitely have agency, in that they change the behaviour of humans within the network. I would argue that dice change the story independently of the humans' intent, as well. Dice may not be part of the fiction, but they have a part in shaping the story that is on par with the players and DM (who are also not part of the fiction).

In this sense, I would argue that the dice - and the *rules* - definitely have agency. And, IMO, should have more agency than the humans involved. IME people disagree with this stance more in RPGs than they do for Chess or Monopoly or MtG. Or, more accurately, more people acknowledge and advocate for the ability to apply other approaches - and, in the process, often advocate the exclusive "correctness" of alternate approaches - for RPGs than for other games.

Which ties well into a discussion about taking PCs prisoner, because many objectionable ways of doing so remove agency from the dice and the rules, let alone from the players.

Talakeal
2020-10-25, 01:32 PM
How to differentiate? Consider skill checks for a moment.

A kid in gym class has a +2 to acrobatics.
A gymnast has a +12 to acrobatics.
The DC for climbing this rope is DC 10.

Fumble
Fumble: If either of them rolls a nat 1, they fail, and have extra fumbling consequences.
The kid has 5% chance of a fumble, 30% of a fail, and a 65% chance to succeed.
The gymnast has a 5% chance of a fumble, and a 95% chance to succeed.

Degrees of failure
Degree of failure. Fail the DC by 5 or more and get extra consequences.
The kid has 15% chance of a extra bad fail, 20% of a fail, and a 65% chance to succeed.
The gymnast has a 100% chance to succeed.

That is the difference. With Fumbles everyone is equally incompetent per task, which means the experts get the extra bad consequences more per second than the amateurs. With Degrees of failure the consequences are tied to your performance, which means experts get the extra bad consequences less than amateurs.


Ok, so I am still curious about this.

So, you are saying that the "fumble" is a mechanic that causes auto failure, regardless of skill or difficulty, on a certain dice roll? And that is is disconnected from the bad consequences of a roll?

So, D&D's "Auto miss on a natural 1" is a fumble mechanic, but its "Fail a climb test by five or more and you fall" is not?

Is this correct?

If not, what am I still missing?

If so, where did this terminology come from? As I said, afaict most games do not make that distinction, and some, such as PF and BRP seem to use the terms interchangeably. D&D does not call auto 1 on a failure a "fumble" but rather has two optional rules for consequences on a confirmed natural 1 in the DMG, the attack variant listed as fumble and the skill variant as critical failure. Is it a European thing? As I notice a lot of people making this distinction seem to be referencing German (iirc) games like TDE and splittermond.

Satinavian
2020-10-25, 01:51 PM
Ok, so I am still curious about this.

So, you are saying that the "fumble" is a mechanic that causes auto failure, regardless of skill or difficulty, on a certain dice roll? And that is is disconnected from the bad consequences of a roll?

So, D&D's "Auto miss on a natural 1" is a fumble mechanic, but its "Fail a climb test by five or more and you fall" is not?

Is this correct?

If not, what am I still missing?I would add that in most games a fumble has worse consequences than regular failure.


As I notice a lot of people making this distinction seem to be referencing German (iirc) games like TDE and splittermond.Not really. German games use Geman terminology. "Fumble" comes from the Anglosphere and most likely from some widespread old games.

Vahnavoi
2020-10-25, 02:21 PM
I'm fairly sure the idea of fumbles as spectacular failures was codified and spread by Rolemaster and its derivatives. Its critical success and critical failure tables were legendary.

OldTrees1
2020-10-25, 04:22 PM
Ok, so I am still curious about this.

So, you are saying that the "fumble" is a mechanic that causes auto failure, regardless of skill or difficulty, on a certain dice roll? And that is is disconnected from the bad consequences of a roll?

So, D&D's "Auto miss on a natural 1" is a fumble mechanic, but its "Fail a climb test by five or more and you fall" is not?

Is this correct?

If not, what am I still missing?


D&D's auto miss on a natural 1 is a fumble mechanic.
D&D's fall if you fail a climb by 5 or more is a degrees of failure mechanic.

If rolling an unmodified ___ on a check has a negative consequence, that is probably a fumble mechanic.
If your modified total on a check has a negative consequence based on how far it undershot the DC, that is probably a degree of failure mechanic.

Quiz: If a new RPG called Examples & Exits has you explode if you roll a natural 13 on a stealth check and you freeze to death if you fail a knowledge check by more than 7, which is an example of which?

Answer:
The explosion on a natural 13 is a fumble mechanic
The freezing if you fail by 7 or more is a degree of failure mechanic
In this example both are badly designed to inject some humor.


If so, where did this terminology come from? As I said, afaict most games do not make that distinction, and some, such as PF and BRP seem to use the terms interchangeably. D&D does not call auto 1 on a failure a "fumble" but rather has two optional rules for consequences on a confirmed natural 1 in the DMG, the attack variant listed as fumble and the skill variant as critical failure. Is it a European thing? As I notice a lot of people making this distinction seem to be referencing German (iirc) games like TDE and splittermond.

The word "fumble" comes from people (presumably in the USA) playing 1st edition D&D (I think it is a consumer made word rather than one originating in the rulebook). If you want to trace its origins further, that is where you could start.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-25, 04:54 PM
In this sense, I would argue that the dice - and the *rules* - definitely have agency. And, IMO, should have more agency than the humans involved. IME people disagree with this stance more in RPGs than they do for Chess or Monopoly or MtG. Or, more accurately, more people acknowledge and advocate for the ability to apply other approaches - and, in the process, often advocate the exclusive "correctness" of alternate approaches - for RPGs than for other games.

Which ties well into a discussion about taking PCs prisoner, because many objectionable ways of doing so remove agency from the dice and the rules, let alone from the players.


It can be useful to consider the dice, players, and DM as generalized "things with agency", as in actor-network theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93network_theory). I myself have never applied ANT to anything, but I know a few people with PhDs who have, and they all assure me it's very good.

Note that "agency" does not imply "sentience" or "intentionality". The easiest way I've heard it explained is with speed bumps. Speed bumps are not sentient and do not "try" to do anything in the conventional sense. In terms of their behaviour and effect within a network, however, they very much act as if they try to slow down cars on the streets they're on. (Of course, the speed bump was put there by someone, which also has a place in ANT, but let's not go there. Once in place, the speed bump simply "acts".)

In the case of D&D, the dice definitely have agency, in that they change the behaviour of humans within the network. I would argue that dice change the story independently of the humans' intent, as well. Dice may not be part of the fiction, but they have a part in shaping the story that is on par with the players and DM (who are also not part of the fiction).

Dice and rules cannot have agency, because they cannot make decisions or experience consequences. Both of which are sin qua non elements of agency. Dice cannot choose to act differently, because they cannot choose to act at all. They merely exist. And the numbers printed on them require interpretation by people, who have agency to decide on their own interpretations. Dice and rules are tools, created and used by people who have agency.

And simply altering someone else's behavior is not agency--that's just being there. Everything changes behavior. And if everything has agency, then that word is meaningless. Agency requires choice, consequences, and knowledge (not perfect knowledge, but enough to know that there's a difference between the choices).

And RPG rules are fundamentally different (in intent, construction, and implementation) from those of Chess, MtG, or any other such card/board game. One big thing--RPGs are generally not competitive. They're also open-ended, unlike those games where every possible interaction is either in the rules or not allowed.

RPG rules are a framework for automation of resolution of commonly-encountered situations (where common is relative to the intended playstyle of that game). They are a default set of settings which the developers claim will work well together and act as a fun UI to facilitate interactions between the fiction layer and the player layer. They have only utility value, not intrinsic value. "Following the rules", even when it's dumb or produces bad results, is not an inherently good thing. I'd say it's a bad thing. In any conflict between the fun of the table and the rules, the rules lose. The rules are not the game. The rules do not even constrain the game. They're a toolbox to make the underlying thing (free form roleplay) easier (less work) and more reliable/consistent (so that you can have groups that aren't totally on the same wavelength, at least at first). They do this at a cost, however. They do not (or should not) claim any authority or power, because they have none.

------------
Taking people prisoners without recourse or (player) consent is a violation of their agency. The rules and dice have no cause (or ability) to complain. The offense is against the people only, and needs to be redressed at that level.

Talakeal
2020-10-25, 06:09 PM
D&D's auto miss on a natural 1 is a fumble mechanic.
D&D's fall if you fail a climb by 5 or more is a degrees of failure mechanic.

If rolling an unmodified ___ on a check has a negative consequence, that is probably a fumble mechanic.
If your modified total on a check has a negative consequence based on how far it undershot the DC, that is probably a degree of failure mechanic.

Quiz: If a new RPG called Examples & Exits has you explode if you roll a natural 13 on a stealth check and you freeze to death if you fail a knowledge check by more than 7, which is an example of which?

Answer:
The explosion on a natural 13 is a fumble mechanic
The freezing if you fail by 7 or more is a degree of failure mechanic
In this example both are badly designed to inject some humor.



The word "fumble" comes from people (presumably in the USA) playing 1st edition D&D (I think it is a consumer made word rather than one originating in the rulebook). If you want to trace its origins further, that is where you could start.

I get what you are saying, I have just never heard fumble used that way before. You seem to have a very specific definition of it that runs contrary to how I use it or how any of the rule books I am familiar with use it.


Not only am I not familiar with anyone ever using the term "fumble" to refer to D&Ds "nat 1s always miss nat 20s almost hit," I don't think I have ever seen anyone upset by those rules before; it is slightly annoying that it ignores player skill, but that is the smallest unit the d20 can measure, and I think most people like having that sliver of hope and randomness in every encounter.


Taking people prisoners without recourse or (player) consent is a violation of their agency.

I wonder where you draw the line about recourse and what exactly you consider a player's agency to me.

Not that I don't mostly agree with you, I just find it odd that most players would rather wreck the game and kill their characters or just not play at all than go along with a scenario that results in the PCs capture, whether it is a natural outcome of the events in game or the premise of an adventure.

OldTrees1
2020-10-25, 06:47 PM
I get what you are saying, I have just never heard fumble used that way before. You seem to have a very specific definition of it that runs contrary to how I use it or how any of the rule books I am familiar with use it.


Not only am I not familiar with anyone ever using the term "fumble" to refer to D&Ds "nat 1s always miss nat 20s almost hit," I don't think I have ever seen anyone upset by those rules before; it is slightly annoying that it ignores player skill, but that is the smallest unit the d20 can measure, and I think most people like having that sliver of hope and randomness in every encounter.

{Scrubbed}

I have been using the common meaning of the word {Scrubbed}

{Scrubbed}

Talakeal
2020-10-25, 07:03 PM
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

I have been using the common meaning of the word and I have not given you a definition. {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

That's needlessly hostile, don't you think?

Like, I am not sure how to even respond to this, as it seems that all I am doing is asking questions, and all of the semantic arguments seem to be coming from your end. I am not really sure what is is that we were supposed to be "arguing" over.

Are you claiming that I was using fumble to mean natural 1, and then when I realized it was an indefensible position tried to trick people by claiming I thought it meant critical failure? Because that's not the case, but that's the only way I can interpret what you are talking about.

No, I have legitimately never noticed anyone use fumble to mean "auto fail one a one" before. I have always used it to be synonymous with words like critical failure, glitch, mishap, and botch to mean a failure so severe that it makes the situation worse. And, as this is the definition provided by multiple rule books, including enormously popular ones such as 3E D&D and Pathfinder, and I don't know of any system that uses "auto fail on a 1 is a fumble," I fail to see how it me who is using a "very specific abnormal definition".

Again though, I really, really, don't understand what I have said to turn this so confrontational.

Could you please provide me with a definition of the word fumble so we can get on the same page, and please let me know what position you think I was arguing that I needed to use semantics as a crutch?

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-25, 07:21 PM
I wonder where you draw the line about recourse and what exactly you consider a player's agency to me.

Not that I don't mostly agree with you, I just find it odd that most players would rather wreck the game and kill their characters or just not play at all than go along with a scenario that results in the PCs capture, whether it is a natural outcome of the events in game or the premise of an adventure.

Agency is the ability to make meaningful choices (in this case for your character). It has three necessary components, as I see it:
1) the existence of choice. You have no agency in a movie, beyond deciding to watch or not. The unfolding events do not allow you to choose.
2) the existence of consequences for those choices. Imagine a movie that occasionally paused and asked (using some form of menu) "should X character do Y or Z?" but then no matter what you chose, the events still happened exactly the same way. You'd have a choice, but since your choice made no difference, you had no effective agency.
3) a minimum level of knowledge to predict (likely) consequences of choice. Now imagine that the movie wasn't a movie--you actually had input into the events. But everything was being depicted in an abstract way and all the spoken words were in a language you were wholly unfamiliar with. Effectively gibberish. But the action would stop and wait for your input. You'd be choosing at random, and while you could make choices and those choices mattered, you'd still not be able to make meaningful choices, because your choice and the consequences are not linked.

You don't need to have unrestricted choice sets to have agency, although the larger the choice set, the larger the scope for agency.

So in a "traditional" (ie D&D-like) RPG, players have a restricted agency, restricted to their character. That's their only lever in the game. Taking that away or restricting their ability to choose from the existing set is seen as a violation of the core unwritten social compact. It feels like the DM wanting to hog all the toys--they already have the rest of the world, why do they also need my character?

As far as recourse goes, I think it's a sliding scale. The more tie in the "inevitable capture" has with your previous actions and the world's logic/structure, the less recourse is needed to preserve agency.

Low/No violation:
1. The capture is an obvious (to the players!), direct consequence of something that they did, and was obvious at the time of the action. The forces employed fit the world's internal logic (teleporting CR 42 knights arresting you for saying bad things about an old woman in the street is an example of something that would not fit most world's internal logic)--if you tried to assassinate the king, his forces attack you, which might include armies. If you robbed a regular traveling merchant, you may get local law enforcement after you. You don't get armies of super soldiers or super-ninjas.
.
.
.
2. The inevitable capture is the result of enemies you've made, using forces they've been telegraphed to have available and in the area.
.
.
.
3. The inevitable capture is untelegraphed or uses disproportionate forces, but still more than could be fought off. You can play this as "you can fight back if you want to, but your chances are small. Can we fast forward to save time?"
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.
.
4. The inevitable capture is done by forces that you could have fought off, or you were never given a chance to oppose them in the first place, not even verbally. This is the "fully narrated cutscene" style or the "invisible, undetectable assassins in the night, no save, just captured." scenario.
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5. You did fight them off, but the DM retconned that and said you were captured anyway. Or other types of post-hoc DM magic even if they can point out rules in the book that say they can do this (often using twisty things). The important thing is that the decision to change the rules happened after you successfully defended yourself.
High violation

Even if you can't do anything in case 1, that's mostly ok because you brought it on yourself and it's just the world reacting sanely. Case 2 can feel like it's out of left field, but the threads are clear. Case 3 is where you start getting sticky and making people mad. You've blindsided them and denied the consequences of their actions and broke the logic of the world. Cases 4 and 5 are progressively more egregious denials of choice and consequence.

Case 3 can be fun, if you get player buy-in ahead of time. Cases 1 and 2 are normal play. Cases 4 and 5 (especially 5) are, IMO, no-goes. Don't even ask.

OldTrees1
2020-10-25, 10:58 PM
That's needlessly hostile, don't you think?

{Scrubbed}

Talakeal
2020-10-25, 11:10 PM
Even if you can't do anything in case 1, that's mostly ok because you brought it on yourself and it's just the world reacting sanely. Case 2 can feel like it's out of left field, but the threads are clear. Case 3 is where you start getting sticky and making people mad. You've blindsided them and denied the consequences of their actions and broke the logic of the world. Cases 4 and 5 are progressively more egregious denials of choice and consequence.

Case 3 can be fun, if you get player buy-in ahead of time. Cases 1 and 2 are normal play. Cases 4 and 5 (especially 5) are, IMO, no-goes. Don't even ask.

For me personally, they are all no goes. Even #1, I fully expect the players to intentionally end the campaign in a TPK in a sort of "You will never take me alive coppers!" last stand even if they know they are only going to be ransomed / fined and then released.

I am curious about number four though. Lots of modules (for example Out of the Abyss and Way of the Wicked iirc) start with the presumption that the players are in captivity at the start of the game. I really don't understand why players should be expected to reject the premise of such a module outright, anymore than they should reject exploring the Tome of Horrors if the DM is running the eponymous module. IMO it seems to be rather poor sportsmanship to reject the premise of an adventure that the DM spent a lot of time and or money on like that, and the idea that the DM shouldn't even ask just seems weird to me.

Again, this is a generalization, I can see specific instances where a certain player or a certain character wouldn't want to interact with a particular premise, but all in all I really do not how the DM is the one being unreasonable for wanting the players to engage with the premise of what could be a fun game.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-25, 11:17 PM
For me personally, they are all no goes. Even #1, I fully expect the players to intentionally end the campaign in a TPK in a sort of "You will never take me alive coppers!" last stand even if they know they are only going to be ransomed / fined and then released.

I am curious about number four though. Lots of modules (for example Out of the Abyss and Way of the Wicked iirc) start with the presumption that the players are in captivity at the start of the game. I really don't understand why players should be expected to reject the premise of such a module outright, anymore than they should reject exploring the Tome of Horrors if the DM is running the eponymous module. IMO it seems to be rather poor sportsmanship to reject the premise of an adventure that the DM spent a lot of time and or money on like that, and the idea that the DM shouldn't even ask just seems weird to me.

Again, this is a generalization, I can see specific instances where a certain player or a certain character wouldn't want to interact with a particular premise, but all in all I really do not how the DM is the one being unreasonable for wanting the players to engage with the premise of what could be a fun game.

Note: your perception may be skewed. I'm sure you've never heard that before :small_grin:

And if you're starting in captivity or are captured in narrative time before the game really starts, that's different. You are assumed to have bought into the starting point at session 0 and escape is kinda baked into the cake.

I do know that my players didn't like starting in prison the one time I tried it. But that wasn't "blow up the campaign", it was "find a way to overthrow this corrupt government once we've gained power."

I've never had a group reject the premise absolutely. And if they did, I'd probably deserve some of the blame for not selling it well or not figuring out it was a no go before investing time and money into it.

Quertus
2020-10-26, 06:02 AM
Dice and rules cannot have agency, because they cannot make decisions or experience consequences. Both of which are sin qua non elements of agency. Dice cannot choose to act differently, because they cannot choose to act at all. They merely exist. And the numbers printed on them require interpretation by people, who have agency to decide on their own interpretations. Dice and rules are tools, created and used by people who have agency.

And simply altering someone else's behavior is not agency--that's just being there. Everything changes behavior. And if everything has agency, then that word is meaningless. Agency requires choice, consequences, and knowledge (not perfect knowledge, but enough to know that there's a difference between the choices).

Call it something else if the usage of the word "agency" troubles you. I opened my post with… huh… "In this sense", apparently. OK, not my best weasel words, but intended to convey "if we use this (the proposed ANT version) as the definition of agency…"


And RPG rules are fundamentally different (in intent, construction, and implementation) from those of Chess, MtG, or any other such card/board game.


One big thing--RPGs are generally not competitive.

They are also spelled differently. But neither is particularly relevant.

I mean, sure, tennis is competitive; taxes are not. You get a *different* kind of hurt when people cheat one or the other, but both have rules, and the hurt is still there.


They're also open-ended, unlike those games where every possible interaction is either in the rules or not allowed.

Indeed, that is one of my favorite things about RPGs. And also irrelevant.

In RPGs, players need, as you say later (in a really great post, btw) "a minimum level of knowledge to predict (likely) consequences of choice". This is provided by the ability to extrapolate from known rules, which requires intelligence and consistency. Remove the underlying consistency of following the rules, and you are removing agency.


RPG rules are a framework for automation of resolution of commonly-encountered situations (where common is relative to the intended playstyle of that game). They are a default set of settings which the developers claim will work well together and act as a fun UI to facilitate interactions between the fiction layer and the player layer. They have only utility value, not intrinsic value.


"Following the rules", even when it's dumb or produces bad results, is not an inherently good thing.

"Being good", even when it's dumb or products bad results, is not an inherently good thing.

Following the rules, OTOH, is. It provides consistency necessary for agency.

Now, you can argue that reduced agency is more fun *for you*, and that is a legitimate thing to say. However, you cannot dictate that reduced agency is more fun *for me*.


I'd say it's a bad thing. In any conflict between the fun of the table and the rules, the rules lose.

"In any conflict between the net fun of the world and the life of one person, the one person loses" is a valid moral stance. However, it is not the only possible moral stance.

Same thing here.

Some lose enjoyment by living in such a world, or playing in such a game - and/or find such morally objectionable.


The rules are not the game. The rules do not even constrain the game. They're a toolbox to make the underlying thing (free form roleplay) easier (less work) and more reliable/consistent (so that you can have groups that aren't totally on the same wavelength, at least at first). They do this at a cost, however. They do not (or should not) claim any authority or power, because they have none.

You are starting from freeform, and view the rules of RPGs as constraining. I, however, am starting from war gaming, and view the rules of RPGs as liberating.


------------
Taking people prisoners without recourse or (player) consent is a violation of their agency. The rules and dice have no cause (or ability) to complain. The offense is against the people only, and needs to be redressed at that level.

I don't think it has to be just one: you can violate player agency *and* break the rules, and I believe that things should be fixed at *every* level/layer that they are broken.


I get what you are saying, I have just never heard fumble used that way before. You seem to have a very specific definition of it that runs contrary to how I use it or how any of the rule books I am familiar with use it.


Not only am I not familiar with anyone ever using the term "fumble" to refer to D&Ds "nat 1s always miss nat 20s almost hit," I don't think I have ever seen anyone upset by those rules before; it is slightly annoying that it ignores player skill, but that is the smallest unit the d20 can measure, and I think most people like having that sliver of hope and randomness in every encounter.

I wonder where you draw the line about recourse and what exactly you consider a player's agency to me.


If you attempt to misunderstand, you will surely succeed.

I have been using the common meaning of the word and I have not given you a definition. However I severely doubt you were unaware of this meaning. Although it is entirely plausible you have some very specific abnormal definition you use.

Unfortunately you seem to adopt the semantic swamp as an argumentative crutch rather than ask questions in good faith.

I've gotta admit, I am confused as well. I have always taken as inherent to the definition of a fumble that it is worse than a simple failure.

That said, Talakeal, I therefore view your previous example fumble of "a burnt meal" as a failure, not a fumble. Starting a kitchen fire or burning the house down would be a fumble; allying that only reduces the food value of the food is simply a failure IMO.


Not that I don't mostly agree with you, I just find it odd that most players would rather wreck the game and kill their characters or just not play at all than go along with a scenario that results in the PCs capture, whether it is a natural outcome of the events in game or the premise of an adventure.

The game is already wrecked; the players (or I, at least) would be attempting to *fix* the game - and all future games - via the liberal application of a (verbal) clue-by-four.

OldTrees1
2020-10-26, 08:06 AM
I've gotta admit, I am confused as well. I have always taken as inherent to the definition of a fumble that it is worse than a simple failure.

I agree, but the "auto fail regardless of your total" is technically worse than a simple failure. I used that as one of my 6-8? examples in demonstrating the difference between fumble mechanics and degree of failure mechanics. Even if you disagree with that 1 example, you can see the differentiate I made.

Talakeal
2020-10-26, 01:58 PM
That said, Talakeal, I therefore view your previous example fumble of "a burnt meal" as a failure, not a fumble. Starting a kitchen fire or burning the house down would be a fumble; allying that only reduces the food value of the food is simply a failure IMO.

Yeah, I suppose. Burning my hand maybe? Or getting food poisoning?

In my games, I typically say that a failure when crafting wastes time, a fumble also wastes the materials, but that one isn't so clear cut.

A lot of skills have more distinct fumble / failure states; falling vs. not being able to get up when climbing, missing your target vs. a friendly fire incident when shooting, crashing vs. being late when driving, being sick vs. dying when bitten by a rattlesnake, etc.


Note: your perception may be skewed. I'm sure you've never heard that before :small_grin:

And if you're starting in captivity or are captured in narrative time before the game really starts, that's different. You are assumed to have bought into the starting point at session 0 and escape is kinda baked into the cake.

I do know that my players didn't like starting in prison the one time I tried it. But that wasn't "blow up the campaign", it was "find a way to overthrow this corrupt government once we've gained power."

I've never had a group reject the premise absolutely. And if they did, I'd probably deserve some of the blame for not selling it well or not figuring out it was a no go before investing time and money into it.

It might not be the start of the "campaign" though; it might just be the start of an adventure. Being captured and then having to either break out or cut a deal with your captors is a pretty standard literary trope / adventure hook; and its a shame that, in my experience, most players simply reject such a scenario out of hand and would rather than play in what could otherwise be a very fun game.

Xervous
2020-10-26, 03:03 PM
It might not be the start of the "campaign" though; it might just be the start of an adventure. Being captured and then having to either break out or cut a deal with your captors is a pretty standard literary trope / adventure hook; and its a shame that, in my experience, most players simply reject such a scenario out of hand and would rather than play in what could otherwise be a very fun game.

Out of the blue what warnings do they have that this group of people who wishes them ill are any different from the last twenty assortments of orks/gecko cat bats/lawyers/corrupt politicians? The players understand defeat is a failure state so they’ll fight against anything that superficially looks like defeat. Without warning it’s just a lurching sensation as the amusement park ride gets tugged onto the tracks.

Talakeal
2020-10-26, 03:28 PM
Out of the blue what warnings do they have that this group of people who wishes them ill are any different from the last twenty assortments of orks/gecko cat bats/lawyers/corrupt politicians? The players understand defeat is a failure state so they’ll fight against anything that superficially looks like defeat. Without warning it’s just a lurching sensation as the amusement park ride gets tugged onto the tracks.

Generally, the enemies offer who are interested in taking prisoners will offer the PCs a chance to surrender, those that aren’t won’t.

Of course, if the players aren’t sure, they could always ask their enemies for terms or make a local knowledge check to see if they know how these guys treat their prisoners.

Vahnavoi
2020-10-26, 03:44 PM
And RPG rules are fundamentally different (in intent, construction, and implementation) from those of Chess, MtG, or any other such card/board game. One big thing--RPGs are generally not competitive. They're also open-ended, unlike those games where every possible interaction is either in the rules or not allowed.


You are correct that RPGs are different, but both of your examples of how they're different, though oft repeated, are atrocious.

One one hand, open-endedness and non-competitiveness exist in plenty of games which are not roleplaying games, starting with children's games such as Chinese Whispers or Telephone. On the other, it is trivial to design roleplaying games with a competitive elements, either player versus player or player versus environment, starting with tournament games of D&D and these days more popular in form of vast array of Werewolf-derived roleplaying scenarios. Computer games have also shown that a roleplaying game with a closed ruleset is perfectly viable, because a computer game requires closed design to function, yet high agency computer RPGs exist.

What actually defines RPGs and sets them apart is this: the player assumes the role of a character and decides what to do, and how, and why, in a virtual scenario. Your argument about agency can be boiled down to a simple statement: if a player is not making decisions, they aren't actually playing. Your argument about purpose of game rules can be boiled to a slightly more complex statement: game rules exist to facilitate the character and the scenario and where they fail to make a player's process of decision-making interesting (sorry, "fun"), they are bad rules. Point being, gist of what you say is perfectly agreeable, but is actually orthogonal to some of the claims you made about nature of RPGs.

icefractal
2020-10-26, 04:04 PM
Generally, the enemies offer who are interested in taking prisoners will offer the PCs a chance to surrender, those that aren’t won’t.As a player, our party has sometimes asked foes to surrender, or simply used nonlethal damage, with the intent of taking them prisoner.

Usually they're treated fairly well (if the party has people who'd torture prisoners, I'm not gonna take any prisoners), but:
* They're not getting their stuff back.
* They're not going to be put in a situation where escape is at all easy.
* If they represent an ongoing threat (rather than just needing them out of our way), then they're probably going to be taken to some town/city big enough to reasonably securely imprison them.

So assuming that everything will work out ok if we get captured (rather than "after ten years, you're released from prison") requires assuming that the people capturing us are equally or more ethical and significantly less competent than the PCs would be in their place.

Sure, it won't work that way because plot. But I admit, I don't really like the "you are prisoners" trope much, not enough that I want to suspend disbelief and act OOC for it when I could be saving that suspension of disbelief for other things.

Honestly, the main circumstance where I'd surrender (as a character) is if I was fully intending to go to trial and serve the sentence if it came to that. It could be worth it to remain a non-outlaw in a kingdom you care about, for instance. But if you intend to break out, you're going to be an outlaw anyway, so why not try to resist capture in the first place?

Talakeal
2020-10-26, 05:02 PM
As a player, our party has sometimes asked foes to surrender, or simply used nonlethal damage, with the intent of taking them prisoner.

Usually they're treated fairly well (if the party has people who'd torture prisoners, I'm not gonna take any prisoners), but:
* They're not getting their stuff back.
* They're not going to be put in a situation where escape is at all easy.
* If they represent an ongoing threat (rather than just needing them out of our way), then they're probably going to be taken to some town/city big enough to reasonably securely imprison them.

So assuming that everything will work out ok if we get captured (rather than "after ten years, you're released from prison") requires assuming that the people capturing us are equally or more ethical and significantly less competent than the PCs would be in their place.

Sure, it won't work that way because plot. But I admit, I don't really like the "you are prisoners" trope much, not enough that I want to suspend disbelief and act OOC for it when I could be saving that suspension of disbelief for other things.

Honestly, the main circumstance where I'd surrender (as a character) is if I was fully intending to go to trial and serve the sentence if it came to that. It could be worth it to remain a non-outlaw in a kingdom you care about, for instance. But if you intend to break out, you're going to be an outlaw anyway, so why not try to resist capture in the first place?

I find the idea that the average PC would rather die than risk being captured to be rather poor RP. Now, for some characters it makes sense, like a samurai or an escaped slave, but for most people I just don't buy it.

Most good and / or lawful foes will probably have some sort of code about treatment of prisoners, and might even give back gear as a matter of course.

Heck, I remember Necromunda, a game about savage post apocalyptic street gangs, had a rule that you must exchange prisoners and their gear on a one for one basis, regardless of relative value and personal feelings on the matter.

But, even so, unless you are playing in a super high magic setting, surely characters value their life more than their gear?

zinycor
2020-10-26, 05:12 PM
I find the idea that the average PC would rather die than risk being captured to be rather poor RP. Now, for some characters it makes sense, like a samurai or an escaped slave, but for most people I just don't buy it.

Most good and / or lawful foes will probably have some sort of code about treatment of prisoners, and might even give back gear as a matter of course.

Heck, I remember Necromunda, a game about savage post apocalyptic street gangs, had a rule that you must exchange prisoners and their gear on a one for one basis, regardless of relative value and personal feelings on the matter.

But, even so, unless you are playing in a super high magic setting, surely characters value their life more than their gear?

On most cases I would rather have my character die than be taken prisoner.

After all, I didn't create a prisoner nor am I interested on playing one.

icefractal
2020-10-26, 05:39 PM
Why would they assume the alternative is death? Because some people are pointing weapons at them? For an adventurer, that's an average day.

Also, why are LG people trying to capture you? Is it because you're evil? If so, are you sure that a fair trial won't result in your execution or secure imprisonment?

ExLibrisMortis
2020-10-26, 06:09 PM
Dice and rules cannot have agency [...]
I'm going to stop you right there. In ANT, they can. Every professor of sociology will back me on this*. Saying that dice can't have agency means you are not taking the point seriously.

Once again: nobody's saying that dice are sentient, thinking, make choices, or whatever. The point is not to challenge conventional notions of personhood. The point is pragmatic**: it can be useful, for a given analysis of social structure, to consider the inorganic (e.g. technological) objects that are part of the social structure to have agency. That doesn't mean everything has agency. Only those things that are part of the structure that can usefully be analyzed in those terms (you are not, I trust, trying to analyze RPG gaming by taking the entire universe as starting point). In the case of "playing RPGs", it might well be that the rulebooks have agency, the dice have agency, the roll20 software has agency, and probably some other things besides players have agency, too. The road surface on the way to the game store? Probably doesn't.

Anyway, the point wasn't to immediately make everyone read up on ANT or change their ontologies. The point was that sometimes, a different perspective is helpful, and some perspectives are as surprising as "rules and dice have agency".

Okay, philosophy post over, back to the topic at hand.

*Yes, I realize this is not a very elegant argument, but I can hardly quote an entire Latour book at you. You're just going to have to take it on trust that this is a real thing that real scholars use every day. "Dice can't have agency" doesn't set aside forty years of scholarship.
**The point can also be theoretical, e.g. when arguing that "agency" is not in any useful sense observable or measurable, but rather something attributed by someone to something to name a certain pattern of behaviour (e.g. humans recognizing patterns in human behaviour), thus we can attribute it however we please. And please, this is an off-topic footnote: no need to argue the point if you disagree :smalltongue:.

Quertus
2020-10-26, 07:55 PM
its a shame that, in my experience, most players simply reject such a scenario out of hand and would rather than play in what could otherwise be a very fun game.

There's lots of things that *could* be fun, but consent and preference are important to most of them.

However, let's look at this particular example.

CaS says that all challenges should be "sporting". An unwinnable fight is a violation of CaS (and could explain some "fight to the death" mentality).

CaW says "what's there is there"; however, "cut scene capture" completely violates logical consequences proceeding from facts and rules, so this is a violation of CaW, as well.

Railroaded capture is a violation of Agency, and a sign of a GM willing to railroad, and of rails to come. Have you really known many players who *liked* railroads? I haven't. So, yeah, that's definitely a "game over, back to the drawing board" scenario.

And…



On most cases I would rather have my character die than be taken prisoner.

After all, I didn't create a prisoner nor am I interested on playing one.

Yeah, who said that it would be a fun game? I certainly don't expect that it would be a fun game. And I don't expect a GM so clueless about Agency to produce a fun game, especially not under such circumstances.

How about we start with a base that shows more respect for the players Agency, and a base that has more potential for fun?

A GM who had shown the right mix of skills, and whose pitch indicated that they would be leveraging those skills in a "begin in prison" scenario? I *might* consider it. It's as good a way as any to introduce Verbal Kent. :smallwink:

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-26, 08:08 PM
There's lots of things that *could* be fun, but consent and preference are important to most of them.

However, let's look at this particular example.

CaS says that all challenges should be "sporting". An unwinnable fight is a violation of CaS (and could explain some "fight to the death" mentality).

CaW says "what's there is there"; however, "cut scene capture" completely violates logical consequences proceeding from facts and rules, so this is a violation of CaW, as well.

Railroaded capture is a violation of Agency, and a sign of a GM willing to railroad, and of rails to come. Have you really known many players who *liked* railroads? I haven't. So, yeah, that's definitely a "game over, back to the drawing board" scenario.

And…




Yeah, who said that it would be a fun game? I certainly don't expect that it would be a fun game. And I don't expect a GM so clueless about Agency to produce a fun game, especially not under such circumstances.

How about we start with a base that shows more respect for the players Agency, and a base that has more potential for fun?

A GM who had shown the right mix of skills, and whose pitch indicated that they would be leveraging those skills in a "begin in prison" scenario? I *might* consider it. It's as good a way as any to introduce Verbal Kent. :smallwink:

IMO, the right way to do a non-starting arc that involves getting captured is one of

1. give them a reason to want to be on the inside. The whole "prison break out of an unassailable fortress" (easier to get out than to get in, at least without a massive army) scenario. Make it open, make it transparent that that's the plan and plot. This establishes that the inconvenience is going to be temporary and furthers their goals.

2. Metagame it. Explicitly talk to the party ahead of time, out of character, and tell them what you want to do. Then get their buy-in knowing the parameters. And have them help you figure out a way to make it stick in character and in universe. If they don't agree, don't do it. Note: this is the same as starting in prison.

Either way, you're doing it with their (the players', not the characters') cooperation, so no violation of expectations or agency. Just people playing a slightly different game. You also build trust between DM and players, at least as long as you actually follow through on the agreed-on framework.

It doesn't work very well for highly-sandbox games, but then again much of a DM's standard arsenal doesn't work very well there, at least without substantial tweaking. And there's a large gap between a railroad and a pure sandbox--most players I've met aren't happy in either extreme. They want agency (both large-scale and small-scale) but they also want direction and (for lack of a better word) plot.

Satinavian
2020-10-27, 03:20 AM
Being captured and then having to either break out or cut a deal with your captors is a pretty standard literary trope / adventure hook; and its a shame that, in my experience, most players simply reject such a scenario out of hand and would rather than play in what could otherwise be a very fun game.

If you want to play such a fun scenario, convince your players that it actually would be fun and get buy-in. If they don't want to play a prisoner episode, they probably won't have fun playing a prisoner episode. And no, the GM does not know better what is fun for players than players do.


You should never force the game in a certain direction you want to tell a story about against the will of your players.

Democratus
2020-10-27, 08:48 AM
The kind of player who would rather kill their character than have it suffer a serious setback isn't the kind of player I'd want at my table.

The heroic journey isn't an arrow pointing straight up. The 2nd act of many of the greatest stories has an "all is lost" point. And if a player isn't capable of experiencing the entire hero's journey - not just the triumphs - then I don't consider them a good fit to RP at my table.

Fortunately, I've run into this problem maybe 2 or 3 times out of the hundreds of players I've had at my tables. So I certainly haven't seen an issue where "a majority of players" would balk at a capture/imprisonment/major setback situation.

A character always has agency. Agency does not mean a character can do anything. It simply means that they are free to make whatever choices their given situation allows.

In a prison scenario, a character has full agency to react and make choices that are available to a prisoner. If captured, a character has full agency to do what a captive would do.

Lacking imagination is not the same as lacking agency.

Quertus
2020-10-27, 10:29 AM
IMO, the right way to do a non-starting arc that involves getting captured is one of

1. give them a reason to want to be on the inside. The whole "prison break out of an unassailable fortress" (easier to get out than to get in, at least without a massive army) scenario. Make it open, make it transparent that that's the plan and plot. This establishes that the inconvenience is going to be temporary and furthers their goals.

2. Metagame it. Explicitly talk to the party ahead of time, out of character, and tell them what you want to do. Then get their buy-in knowing the parameters. And have them help you figure out a way to make it stick in character and in universe. If they don't agree, don't do it. Note: this is the same as starting in prison.

Either way, you're doing it with their (the players', not the characters') cooperation, so no violation of expectations or agency. Just people playing a slightly different game. You also build trust between DM and players, at least as long as you actually follow through on the agreed-on framework.

Strongly agree. Well said.

I would add, "if it comes up organically" - enemy dice are hot, Wizard "friendly fires" a Fireball on the party, etc - and the party finds that they need to surrender.


It doesn't work very well for highly-sandbox games,

Railroading does not exist in a sandbox, yeah.


And there's a large gap between a railroad and a pure sandbox--most players I've met aren't happy in either extreme. They want agency (both large-scale and small-scale) but they also want direction and (for lack of a better word) plot.

Have you seen players who enjoy a) picking and choosing *which* plots to engage, or b) choosing *how* to engage plot elements? "The evil princess has kidnapped a Dragon? Let's go steal some Dragon eggs to sell/gift to her as consolation for when a group of adventurers comes along and rescues the Dragon, as they invariably do"?


The kind of player who would rather kill their character than have it suffer a serious setback isn't the kind of player I'd want at my table.

The heroic journey isn't an arrow pointing straight up. The 2nd act of many of the greatest stories has an "all is lost" point. And if a player isn't capable of experiencing the entire hero's journey - not just the triumphs - then I don't consider them a good fit to RP at my table.

Fortunately, I've run into this problem maybe 2 or 3 times out of the hundreds of players I've had at my tables. So I certainly haven't seen an issue where "a majority of players" would balk at a capture/imprisonment/major setback situation.

A character always has agency. Agency does not mean a character can do anything. It simply means that they are free to make whatever choices their given situation allows.

In a prison scenario, a character has full agency to react and make choices that are available to a prisoner. If captured, a character has full agency to do what a captive would do.

Lacking imagination is not the same as lacking agency.

The *lack* of Agency is in the railroading of the capture. And a prison scenario generally results in a great *reduction* of Agency. A GM who cannot comprehend this and have a discussion about it is certainly not someone I'd want GMing.

I'm all about setbacks and failures, but I want to come by them honest - I'm not willing to accept rails, and don't care for formulaic "hero's journey". And, again, a GM who cannot comprehend this well enough to have a conversation about it is not someone I'd want GMing.

Now, some people *do* want to hit certain "story beats". And that's fine. It's just not my thing. But someone who wants to GM should be capable of comprehending the difference, and having a reasonable conversation with their players to evaluate and discuss these differences in playstyle expectations.

-----

I'm a bit curious about your statistics: you say that you've "run into this problem maybe 2 or 3 times out of the hundreds of players I've had at my tables". Just how many of these players have you railroaded into a "capture" scenario, and how many of those committed suicide in response? Are we to infer that you *always* railroad all players into capture scenes (because it fits your story beats for a hero's journey?), and, of the hundreds of players you've done so to, it was only a problem for a single player each of the 2-3 times that a PC killed themselves in response?

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-27, 11:25 AM
Have you seen players who enjoy a) picking and choosing *which* plots to engage, or b) choosing *how* to engage plot elements? "The evil princess has kidnapped a Dragon? Let's go steal some Dragon eggs to sell/gift to her as consolation for when a group of adventurers comes along and rescues the Dragon, as they invariably do"?


All the time. My games are neither plot-free sandboxes (there's always a "main quest" for each arc) nor railroads (I don't plan far enough ahead to railroad :smalltongue:). My general flow goes like:

1. At the beginning of an arc (ie when a new campaign finishes or they finish/quit their current arc), the players decide what area of the world to focus on. Sometimes this comes from a "menu" of "quest seeds" (situations going on in the world, presented in character and out of character), sometimes this comes from character or player goals. Often this has happened as "we need a power-up arc before tackling <long-term goal>, so let's find a short sidequest".

1a. A sample quest seed (my current one) is "The village of Honedaxe is trying to build a port to <deal with local political situation>, but they've been having all sorts of troubles. People are saying that they're cursed. Figure out what's going on and fix what you can." And I only know high-level things beyond that at session 0.

2. They start engaging however they choose. The seed is just there to get them somewhere and doing stuff. Everything snowballs from there--the world reacts to the characters and vice versa.

3. The situation gets resolved one way or another. GOTO 1.

So they have both a menu of choices (some self-generated, some DM-generated) and (rough, but constrained) flexibility in how they approach the situations. And they take it routinely. One example of the second was where the players had two obvious choices

Mission: ensure the destruction of a particular facility.

Complication: the only way to ensure total destruction is to get the controlling "computer" (a composite soul in a jar) to self-destruct. But most of that soul was, in essence, an innocent. And they liked her. They also had a chance to save her, at the cost of not destroying the facility.

Third Way: Based on scraps of things I had said and people they'd befriended (which I did not expect), they had access to a body without a soul (mechanical). They spent some time and effort to research a way to split the amalgam soul into "innocent" and "wanting to die", downloading the innocent soul into the body and leaving the "wanting to die (out of guilt for participation in an atrocity)" part to do the self-destruct. Win-win...and totally unplanned. Because they had done the initial infiltration completely differently than expected.

Talakeal
2020-10-27, 11:36 AM
Question for the people (mostly Quertus) saying it is easier to res someone than rescue a prisoner; don't most systems have permanent stat and / or level loss from resurrections magic? Is that really worth it?


On most cases I would rather have my character die than be taken prisoner.

Well, as a player I could see that, although I don't think that is (typically) the advantageous situation from a long term gamist perspective or what the character would prefer from an RP perspective.

The real question though is, why? Its not like you don't get to play the game while captive. Its not like you don't get to do fun things while in captivity, you can even have prison fights or formal arena matches if you like combat, and I personally love "clash of wills" type situations that result from interrogations and the like.

Worst case scenario, you just mark some gear / treasure of your sheet as a fine / ransom / confiscation and continue playing as normal, which is (typically) less of a hassle or a setback then either paying for a resurrections or creating a new character.

Most of the time, it will just be a launching point for a jail-break / slave revolt / infiltration quest or doing a favor in exchange for your freedom, meaning that it is fundamentally the same as any other quest assignment.


After all, I didn't create a prisoner nor am I interested on playing one.

Again, the question is why is being a prisoner specifically is so bad.

But, on a broader spectrum, you could say that about a lot of things. I mean, odds are you didn't create a hunter, or a soldier, or a researcher, or a merchant, but those are all things adventurer's regularly do. I fundamentally don't see how being a prisoner is fundamentally different from, say, needing to take a ship to the adventure location. In character it is boring and you don't have a lot of agency while on the voyage, you likely didn't create your character for the purposes of being a sailor, and it often costs a lot of time and / or money. But, it leads to a fun adventure in the end, often has exciting opportunities for RP or even combat on board, and you simply gloss over the boring parts.

Although, maybe that is a bad examples, as getting PCs on boats is also one of the great difficulties of being a DM... they seem to know that the DM never gets an opportunity to use aquatic monsters or castaway plots...


Why would they assume the alternative is death? Because some people are pointing weapons at them? For an adventurer, that's an average day.

Because they are in over their head, they made a tactical blunder, had a really cold steak of dice rolls, or because they attracted too much attention and are hopelessly outnumbered (the latter happens a lot to my players, they will bypass encounters rather than dealing with them, and then forget that they are now surrounded by enemies who are individually a fair fight for them).

You don't (typically) offer to surrender if you think you have a realistic chance of victory.


Also, why are LG people trying to capture you? Is it because you're evil? If so, are you sure that a fair trial won't result in your execution or secure imprisonment?

Maybe you are an outlaw. Maybe you an enemy soldier. Maybe they are chaotic good or lawful evil and you have a legitimate grievance with them but they are still following a code of some sort.

Even if you are guilty of capitol crimes, odds are you will still get a fair trial or (more likely for exceptional people like PCs) be able to cut a deal, which is, imo, still better odds than continuing to fight against an entire squad of armed guards who have home field advantage when half your team is unconscious and the rest are down to cantrips and single digit HP.


CaS says that all challenges should be "sporting". An unwinnable fight is a violation of CaS (and could explain some "fight to the death" mentality).

CaW says "what's there is there"; however, "cut scene capture" completely violates logical consequences proceeding from facts and rules, so this is a violation of CaW, as well.

Railroaded capture is a violation of Agency, and a sign of a GM willing to railroad, and of rails to come. Have you really known many players who *liked* railroads? I haven't. So, yeah, that's definitely a "game over, back to the drawing board" scenario.

And…




Yeah, who said that it would be a fun game? I certainly don't expect that it would be a fun game. And I don't expect a GM so clueless about Agency to produce a fun game, especially not under such circumstances.

How about we start with a base that shows more respect for the players Agency, and a base that has more potential for fun?

CaS can still produce unwinnable results if the dice are cold or the players are foolish.

Things that happen during a cut scene are by definition not play and don't have agency. I typically gloss over the downtime between adventures or travel scenes, and typically skip to the "fun part" of an adventure to keep from boring my players. You might do it differently.

And again, being a prisoner might be extremely fun; some of the most memorable games I have played in have involved capture, and most players seem to really enjoy prison yard fights and arena matches as they scratch the combat as sport itch without needing a lot of justification.

Also, one constant complaint from my games is that they aren't rail-roady enough. Player's feeling lost or bored is a way bigger problem than lack of agency. I tend to have what Fear the Boot calls "baby bird" players who want to plot pre-chewed and dropped into their mouths rather than going out and making their own fun, and I haven't had a great track record with sandbox style play.


If you want to play such a fun scenario, convince your players that it actually would be fun and get buy-in. If they don't want to play a prisoner episode, they probably won't have fun playing a prisoner episode. And no, the GM does not know better what is fun for players than players do.

You should never force the game in a certain direction you want to tell a story about against the will of your players.

Well... you can force yourself not to like something, but, like most things in life, you often enjoy new experiences if you give them a chance.

But no, I don't run prison break scenarios anymore because the players are clear about their dislike. The whole point of this thread is trying to figure out what exactly they don't like and trying to craft a scenario that they can enjoy, or at least tolerate.

It would be nice to be able to look at a book like Descent into Avernus or Out of the Abyss as something other than a fifty dollar doorstop because it starts with the PCs in captivity, or to be able to have adventures with a plot similar to Aladdin or the countless Conan stories where he gets drunk and wakes up in a dungeon.

And it would REALLY be nice to be able to have PCs who can lose a fight without ending the entire campaign in a TPK.


The kind of player who would rather kill their character than have it suffer a serious setback isn't the kind of player I'd want at my table.

The heroic journey isn't an arrow pointing straight up. The 2nd act of many of the greatest stories has an "all is lost" point. And if a player isn't capable of experiencing the entire hero's journey - not just the triumphs - then I don't consider them a good fit to RP at my table.

Fortunately, I've run into this problem maybe 2 or 3 times out of the hundreds of players I've had at my tables. So I certainly haven't seen an issue where "a majority of players" would balk at a capture/imprisonment/major setback situation.

A character always has agency. Agency does not mean a character can do anything. It simply means that they are free to make whatever choices their given situation allows.

In a prison scenario, a character has full agency to react and make choices that are available to a prisoner. If captured, a character has full agency to do what a captive would do.

Lacking imagination is not the same as lacking agency.

Agree 100%

Pex
2020-10-27, 11:47 AM
The kind of player who would rather kill their character than have it suffer a serious setback isn't the kind of player I'd want at my table.

The heroic journey isn't an arrow pointing straight up. The 2nd act of many of the greatest stories has an "all is lost" point. And if a player isn't capable of experiencing the entire hero's journey - not just the triumphs - then I don't consider them a good fit to RP at my table.

Fortunately, I've run into this problem maybe 2 or 3 times out of the hundreds of players I've had at my tables. So I certainly haven't seen an issue where "a majority of players" would balk at a capture/imprisonment/major setback situation.

A character always has agency. Agency does not mean a character can do anything. It simply means that they are free to make whatever choices their given situation allows.

In a prison scenario, a character has full agency to react and make choices that are available to a prisoner. If captured, a character has full agency to do what a captive would do.

Lacking imagination is not the same as lacking agency.

There is a difference between the players tried but failed and now must deal with the unfortunate consequences and the DM forcing unfortunate consequences on the players by fiat. If the defeated party doesn't want to surrender to the orc chief that's their business. It's not your job as DM to make them surrender.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-10-27, 12:18 PM
Question for the people (mostly Quertus) saying it is easier to res someone than rescue a prisoner; don't most systems have permanent stat and / or level loss from resurrections magic? Is that really worth it?



Well, as a player I could see that, although I don't think that is (typically) the advantageous situation from a long term gamist perspective or what the character would prefer from an RP perspective.

The real question though is, why? Its not like you don't get to play the game while captive. Its not like you don't get to do fun things while in captivity, you can even have prison fights or formal arena matches if you like combat, and I personally love "clash of wills" type situations that result from interrogations and the like.

Worst case scenario, you just mark some gear / treasure of your sheet as a fine / ransom / confiscation and continue playing as normal, which is (typically) less of a hassle or a setback then either paying for a resurrections or creating a new character.

Most of the time, it will just be a launching point for a jail-break / slave revolt / infiltration quest or doing a favor in exchange for your freedom, meaning that it is fundamentally the same as any other quest assignment.



Again, the question is why is being a prisoner specifically is so bad.

But, on a broader spectrum, you could say that about a lot of things. I mean, odds are you didn't create a hunter, or a soldier, or a researcher, or a merchant, but those are all things adventurer's regularly do. I fundamentally don't see how being a prisoner is fundamentally different from, say, needing to take a ship to the adventure location. In character it is boring and you don't have a lot of agency while on the voyage, you likely didn't create your character for the purposes of being a sailor, and it often costs a lot of time and / or money. But, it leads to a fun adventure in the end, often has exciting opportunities for RP or even combat on board, and you simply gloss over the boring parts.

Although, maybe that is a bad examples, as getting PCs on boats is also one of the great difficulties of being a DM... they seem to know that the DM never gets an opportunity to use aquatic monsters or castaway plots...




Being captured is essentially catastrophic. In the best case scenario, you lose all your equipment and carried-on-person wealth, which is going for make some characters as good as dead [almost all casters] and with like the exception of Barbaian and Monk, the rest also pretty much worthless without equipment. Even if you break out and scavenge equipment from guards [which even at mid level can be a taller order than it sounds when you do 1+STR Damage], the spellcasters are still effectively the payload in an escort mission who won't be able to restore their character functionality without returning home and potentially spending a lot of money. You then have to return to friendly territory to re-arm and buy back your critical lost equipment with your spellcasters essentially useless and your martials still operating at drastically reduced effectiveness.

In the least favorable of cases, you're not captured by civilized people who abide by the laws of war [even if your are, to be fair as adventurers there aren't really any laws of war to apply to you anyway and you might be up for punishment as a pirate or terrorist anyway and without a chance for repatriation] and could be facing execution, mutilation, and other general mistreatment.




I've only had party members surrender twice: One time, 3 out of 8 party members got caught by a well armed search party while away from the main party. The remaining 5 launched a rescue mission basically immediately and arrived basically on the heels of the other three's captors, so the captured party members spent less than an hour in a temporary holding cell before they were rescued and the guards were caught and killed before they could remove the captured party members equipment. The other time, 1 party member was captured, but the remaining members of the party captured two enemy prisoners in the encounter, and afterwords they arranged a prisoner exchange.

Most of the time, if a fight is going bad, the party should retreat and regroup. Abilities like Fly, Haste, Cunning Action, and Dimension Door can break contact with the enemy [anything that makes the slowest party members faster than the fastest enemy], and then Pass Without Trace or a party stealth roll with assistance can help you go to ground to shake your pursuers. Even if you're forced all the way back to friendly territory, if you retreat instead of surrender you have all your equipment and are fully operational for trip back and don't have to re-buy it upon arrival.




Prison escape is a scenario that should probably be a one shot and requires very specific characters and builds to be fun. Monks and Barbarians, who can keep their effectiveness unarmed and unarmored, Druids who derive most of their effectiveness out of their wild shape, or Rogues who derive most of their effect from their class feature instead of their weapon so even an improvised weapon can still see them operating near full effect. If you play something like a wizard or a bard and wind up without a spellbook and focus [or cleric, or bard, or even a fighter/ranger without the armor and weapons they're specced in to] you're basically confined to following along behind the party until the arc is over.

Satinavian
2020-10-27, 12:26 PM
Question for the people (mostly Quertus) saying it is easier to res someone than rescue a prisoner; don't most systems have permanent stat and / or level loss from resurrections magic? Is that really worth it?Most systems don't have ressurection. Of those that do, most don't have permanent stat losses. Even D&D abandoned it with 3E and changed it to experience loss and in later varations gave that up as well.


Its not like you don't get to play the game while captive. Its not like you don't get to do fun things while in captivity, you can even have prison fights or formal arena matches if you like combat, and I personally love "clash of wills" type situations that result from interrogations and the like.Yes, you get to play. Get to play boring captivity stuff because prisons are mostly about restricting prisoners. Prison fights are usually pointless as you only risk injuries and punishments and even if you win, you are still a prisoner. Better avoid them. "Tst of will" is not something everyone enjoys. Mostly that is about being bullied/tortured and endure it. Somehow most people don't like that.

Usually prison time would be something to fast forward until it is over because it is boring and unpleasent and mostly does not even have interesting choices because the whole scenario is about some other people who have full power over you and want to keep you alive and still imprisoned.
Burt if the GM railroads you into a prison scenario, you can bet, he will want to play out prison time.



Again, the question is why is being a prisoner specifically is so bad.

But, on a broader spectrum, you could say that about a lot of things. I mean, odds are you didn't create a hunter, or a soldier, or a researcher, or a merchant, but those are all things adventurer's regularly do. I fundamentally don't see how being a prisoner is fundamentally different from, say, needing to take a ship to the adventure location. In character it is boring and you don't have a lot of agency while on the voyage, you likely didn't create your character for the purposes of being a sailor, and it often costs a lot of time and / or money. But, it leads to a fun adventure in the end, often has exciting opportunities for RP or even combat on board, and you simply gloss over the boring parts.

Although, maybe that is a bad examples, as getting PCs on boats is also one of the great difficulties of being a DM... they seem to know that the DM never gets an opportunity to use aquatic monsters or castaway plots...


Well... you can force yourself not to like something, but, like most things in life, you often enjoy new experiences if you give them a chance.

But no, I don't run prison break scenarios anymore because the players are clear about their dislike. The whole point of this thread is trying to figure out what exactly they don't like and trying to craft a scenario that they can enjoy, or at least tolerate.

It would be nice to be able to look at a book like Descent into Avernus or Out of the Abyss as something other than a fifty dollar doorstop because it starts with the PCs in captivity, or to be able to have adventures with a plot similar to Aladdin or the countless Conan stories where he gets drunk and wakes up in a dungeon.

And it would REALLY be nice to be able to have PCs who can lose a fight without ending the entire campaign in a TPK.
When i said that you could convince your players that it would be fun, that was not a joke.

If you really want to play Descent into Avernus and really think it is enjoyable, you should have no problems convincing your players. Buy-in is possible.





Personally i have no problems with players loosing fights without TPK. But Not-TPK is not the same thing as "all are prisoners". Retreat is an option. Even running away as fast as you can, screw your slower teammates is an option. Most often when i get PCs captured, it is not the whole group. It is those who are injured and can't move fast or those who fail at reconnaissance.

NigelWalmsley
2020-10-27, 12:58 PM
Most systems don't have ressurection. Of those that do, most don't have permanent stat losses. Even D&D abandoned it with 3E and changed it to experience loss and in later varations gave that up as well.

3e still has permanent stat loss, though in practice it almost never comes up (very few 1st level people get rez'd). But even the level loss is usually serious enough to make getting rez'd a worse outcome for you than just replacing your character.


I fundamentally don't see how being a prisoner is fundamentally different from, say, needing to take a ship to the adventure location.

Because you still get all your abilities on a boat (barring some edge cases) and can still have interesting adventures on a boat. You can do Pirates of the Caribbean or whatever. Whereas a typical prison environment doesn't lend itself well to adventures. If you want to do an interesting prison adventure, it has to look a lot less like what you'd expect from a real-world prison and a lot more like a dungeon crawl where the final boss is the warden. Or "fantasy!Britain has captured you, and for your crimes exiles you to fantasy!Australia". But your basic "you are locked in a cell and lose your stuff" prison is just pretty terrible for adventuring.


If you really want to play Descent into Avernus and really think it is enjoyable, you should have no problems convincing your players. Buy-in is possible.

That's a key thing. Getting buy-in goes a long way. IME, there are a lot of players who don't care very much about the back-drop of their adventures. If you explain that you're going to be doing a pretty standard dungeon crawl that happens to be in a prison, people will probably be fine with that.

zinycor
2020-10-27, 02:13 PM
Well, as a player I could see that, although I don't think that is (typically) the advantageous situation from a long term gamist perspective or what the character would prefer from an RP perspective.

The real question though is, why? Its not like you don't get to play the game while captive. Its not like you don't get to do fun things while in captivity, you can even have prison fights or formal arena matches if you like combat, and I personally love "clash of wills" type situations that result from interrogations and the like.

Worst case scenario, you just mark some gear / treasure of your sheet as a fine / ransom / confiscation and continue playing as normal, which is (typically) less of a hassle or a setback then either paying for a resurrections or creating a new character.

Most of the time, it will just be a launching point for a jail-break / slave revolt / infiltration quest or doing a favor in exchange for your freedom, meaning that it is fundamentally the same as any other quest assignment.



Again, the question is why is being a prisoner specifically is so bad.

But, on a broader spectrum, you could say that about a lot of things. I mean, odds are you didn't create a hunter, or a soldier, or a researcher, or a merchant, but those are all things adventurer's regularly do. I fundamentally don't see how being a prisoner is fundamentally different from, say, needing to take a ship to the adventure location. In character it is boring and you don't have a lot of agency while on the voyage, you likely didn't create your character for the purposes of being a sailor, and it often costs a lot of time and / or money. But, it leads to a fun adventure in the end, often has exciting opportunities for RP or even combat on board, and you simply gloss over the boring parts.

Although, maybe that is a bad examples, as getting PCs on boats is also one of the great difficulties of being a DM... they seem to know that the DM never gets an opportunity to use aquatic monsters or castaway plots...



If I didn't create a researcher I won't research, if I didn't create a hunter, I won't hun, If I didn't create a soldier, I won't act like one.

Being taken prisoner is fundamentally different cause it forces restrictions on my character that I did not agree to. In order for me to agree to such a thing I would need to be convinced it would be fun to, or that it would be brief.

Telok
2020-10-27, 04:47 PM
Being captured is essentially catastrophic. In the best case scenario, you lose all your equipment and carried-on-person wealth, which is going for make some characters as good as dead [almost all casters] and with like the exception of Barbaian and Monk, the rest also pretty much worthless without equipment.

That's all very specific to D&D and it makes assumptions about the nature of the enemies, culture, and imprisonment.

Being defeated and captured by myconoids? They may not want your gear. By inevitables? They may not care at all. Nobles may accept the word of honor of a reputable opponent. A culture that is heavily invested in an honor system may accept a sworn oath for you good behavior. Maybe they imprison people in an alternate dimension where you'll need your gear.

Narative or supers games may not have significant gear. Gear in point buy systems usually can't be permanently removed from the character. Systems that give fighter types more than "I attack again" or don't rely on gear to make up for missing character options or incomplete classes may not care.

In modern and future games prisoners usually have more options, communication, or even freedom. Character usually at least get to call a lawyer. Your stuff may be returned after the imprisonment. Get a good lawyer and you might be out on bail. Fabricate an alibi or call up a fixer to do that for you.

Perhaps the imprisonment is in an ancient mine where the lower tunnels are haunted and unmapped. A prison colony or planet. Alternate dimension prisons. Virtual reality "rehabilitation". Maybe prisoners are used for death match team games, real, illusionary, VR, or in clone bodies.

As soon as you look past D&D with it's all-or-nothing fight-or-die stuff, gear reliant classes, and some characters likely to be useless outside of combat, then losing some fights and being taken prisoner stops being such an issue. Even as long as you don't just strip the characters naked, dump them in a 10x10 silenced antimagic cell, and never let them out, it's not that bad.

OldTrees1
2020-10-27, 08:11 PM
That's all very specific to D&D and it makes assumptions about the nature of the enemies, culture, and imprisonment.

Being defeated and captured by myconoids? They may not want your gear. By inevitables? They may not care at all. Nobles may accept the word of honor of a reputable opponent. A culture that is heavily invested in an honor system may accept a sworn oath for you good behavior. Maybe they imprison people in an alternate dimension where you'll need your gear.

Question: Why would an intelligent captor allow the captive to keep the means to escape capture? Even myconids would separate you from your gear. Inevitable probably have a strict process for removing the gear. If the Noble accepts the PCs at their word, either that word is binding or the noble was foolish. I believe "imprison people in an alternate dimension" is code for "the PCs have no power to escape normally, the DM will provide the means of escape".

While there are exceptions, the vast majority of the time imprisonment = lose your gear.

Which is why their answer to "Why is being a prisoner specifically is so bad?" was "You lose your gear and that is quite crippling."

Now you did then elaborate on why some systems can't actually remove gear and some systems don't use gear. However, I would warrant, those are also exceptions.

Democratus
2020-10-28, 10:29 AM
Question: Why would an intelligent captor allow the captive to keep the means to escape capture? Even myconids would separate you from your gear. Inevitable probably have a strict process for removing the gear. If the Noble accepts the PCs at their word, either that word is binding or the noble was foolish. I believe "imprison people in an alternate dimension" is code for "the PCs have no power to escape normally, the DM will provide the means of escape".

While there are exceptions, the vast majority of the time imprisonment = lose your gear.

Which is why their answer to "Why is being a prisoner specifically is so bad?" was "You lose your gear and that is quite crippling."

Which begs the further question. "Why is being crippled so bad?".

Dealing with adversity is part of the fun of gaming and storytelling.

If a character can literally not talk or think without an item, I can see that would be bad. But unless the only interaction a player expects to have with the game is "I swing my super magic sword" - it isn't really a problem.

The last game in which I was a player ended up being Out of the Abyss. Going in to the game, nobody knew what the campaign would be. Nobody was asked if it was okay to start imprisoned. And it was perfectly fine. In fact, it was a roleplaying bonanza. We spent about a month and a half as prisoners of the Drow at the start of the game and enjoyed every minute of it.

Later on, we ended up being caught and imprisoned again by Duergar. And again it was a great time. We had to figure out what the charges were against our party, discover how the "justice system" of that place worked, and navigate the social and political waters of the underdark city. Most of us never got back our gear that was lost with this second arrest. But a character isn't their gear. This was just another obstacle to deal with as we navigated the story of the game.

At no point did our characters lose agency in the game. We were free to react to the situation however we liked. Sometimes the situation was dire, indeed. But that is how drama is created. :smallsmile:

Telok
2020-10-28, 10:43 AM
Which is why their answer to "Why is being a prisoner specifically is so bad?" was "You lose your gear and that is quite crippling."

Now you did then elaborate on why some systems can't actually remove gear and some systems don't use gear. However, I would warrant, those are also exceptions.

Counter question on the first point: Why does having or lacking "gear", normally in D&D type games being a sword and armor, dictate someone's chances to escape imprisonment? Isn't the whole escape scenario as presented in media and games based on the premise of doing so without "normal gear"? Even in the much maligned D&D 5e OotA module my group managed an escape in less than a RL hour using nothing but a sharp rock and two broken manacles.

So your contentions are that: 1) Loss of gear cripples the abilities of character and thus the fun of players, and is the only rational course of action for those taking prisoners. 2) In the majority of games characters are gear dependent to the point that lacking gear is lacking critical character oprions and abilities. Right?

I don't have a ranked list of all pnp rpgs based on character gear dependence. I didn't find one with a quick search either. So I can't say if that's true by game system. It's probably true by games played, if only in the same way that the default web browser on a computer is the most used because people never go beyond the default option ven if there's better browsers. Since D&D is the major intro game and most people never go beyond that then most played games are heavily gear dependent.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-10-28, 11:10 AM
Counter question on the first point: Why does having or lacking "gear", normally in D&D type games being a sword and armor, dictate someone's chances to escape imprisonment? Isn't the whole escape scenario as presented in media and games based on the premise of doing so without "normal gear"? Even in the much maligned D&D 5e OotA module my group managed an escape in less than a RL hour using nothing but a sharp rock and two broken manacles.


I think there's a sliding scale, and it's game-dependent.

3e is highly highly highly gear dependent. And becomes exponentially more so at higher levels. So starting in prison is mildly inconveniencing at level 1, but being imprisoned at level 15 is brutal (at least if you don't conveniently find a gear box containing all your stuff right outside your cell). "Level appropriate" enemies assume that you've got WBL-appropriate gear, spellbooks, etc and will hard-stop you if you don't have the right counter-gear.

5e is much less so, at all levels. While yes, if you go a long time without any real weapons or armor you get imbalances, you don't need epic super-mega sword of all-kill or ring of not dying to SoD effects just to maintain a game-appropriate baseline.

Xervous
2020-10-28, 11:30 AM
I think there's a sliding scale, and it's game-dependent.

3e is highly highly highly gear dependent. And becomes exponentially more so at higher levels. So starting in prison is mildly inconveniencing at level 1, but being imprisoned at level 15 is brutal (at least if you don't conveniently find a gear box containing all your stuff right outside your cell). "Level appropriate" enemies assume that you've got WBL-appropriate gear, spellbooks, etc and will hard-stop you if you don't have the right counter-gear.

5e is much less so, at all levels. While yes, if you go a long time without any real weapons or armor you get imbalances, you don't need epic super-mega sword of all-kill or ring of not dying to SoD effects just to maintain a game-appropriate baseline.

And then there’s things that get convoluted like cybernetics. Brings a new meaning to disarmed.

NigelWalmsley
2020-10-28, 11:31 AM
3e is highly gear dependent for martials and Wizards. Other characters operate just fine with minimal gear. All most spellcasters need is a generic "spell component pouch" which you can plausibly get from a guard.

OldTrees1
2020-10-28, 12:23 PM
Which begs the further question. "Why is being crippled so bad?".

I believe the question is "Does the group want to explore the PCs being crippled?". Being crippled is a dramatic change in characterization, so it is wise to check in with the players. How much checking in is warranted scales with how dramatic the change is.


Dealing with adversity is part of the fun of gaming and storytelling.

If a character can literally not talk or think without an item, I can see that would be bad. But unless the only interaction a player expects to have with the game is "I swing my super magic sword" - it isn't really a problem.

Do remember it is not "an item" it is all items of relevance. Weapons, Armor, Tools, Supplies, Money, etc.


The last game in which I was a player ended up being Out of the Abyss. Going in to the game, nobody knew what the campaign would be. Nobody was asked if it was okay to start imprisoned. And it was perfectly fine. In fact, it was a roleplaying bonanza. We spent about a month and a half as prisoners of the Drow at the start of the game and enjoyed every minute of it.

Nice. Now, what if one of the players was not okay with it? Or what if they would be okay with it, if and only if they had been told the premise of the campaign was starting as prisoners? Some DM advice is aimed at groups / DMs that are not as carefree as your group. The advice about checking in is to head off those unfortunate cases. That way other groups can have as great a time as our two groups do.


Later on, we ended up being caught and imprisoned again by Duergar.
Based upon the reaction your group had to the opening (enjoying 1.5 months as prisoners) I predict they enjoyed this time too. ... Nice, they did have a good time.


At no point did our characters lose agency in the game. We were free to react to the situation however we liked. Sometimes the situation was dire, indeed. But that is how drama is created. :smallsmile:

Technically your characters did have decreased agency while captured. But the players were okay with that decrease and had a great time. That is the benefit of having good communication between players & DM.


Counter question on the first point: Why does having or lacking "gear", normally in D&D type games being a sword and armor, dictate someone's chances to escape imprisonment? Isn't the whole escape scenario as presented in media and games based on the premise of doing so without "normal gear"? Even in the much maligned D&D 5e OotA module my group managed an escape in less than a RL hour using nothing but a sharp rock and two broken manacles.

Take a moment to think from the jailer's point of view. If you want to keep someone captive, you would remove anything that helped them escape. Now imagine OotA starting with the Rogue having thieves tools, the Wizard having their magic, and the Barbarian having their crowbar. Personally I imagine a Rogue having thieves tools would increase the chances to escape. Don't you? OotA was designed with the intent the PCs would escape, was calibrated with the guards holding the idiot ball, and included multiple ways to recoup or recover the lost gear. However even then you must admit the tools to escape would make it easier.


So your contentions are that: 1) Loss of gear cripples the abilities of character and thus the fun of players, and is the only rational course of action for those taking prisoners. 2) In the majority of games characters are gear dependent to the point that lacking gear is lacking critical character options and abilities. Right?

That is more than what I said (not much more, but still more). I said
1) Assuming the captors are rational, they will generally remove all useful gear, and gear is generally useful in escape attempts.
2) That loss of gear is generally quite crippling to escape attempts (again assuming rational captors).
3) This means becoming captured is usually a severely bad thing happening to the PC.

4) Person A made a post. Person B replied. You replied to Person B. I replied to you, clarifying Person B's answer to Person A. With that additional clarification, you might see Person B's reply to Person A in a new light. There are limitations to my ability to clarify (I can't read minds), please consult Person B.

However I would add that my responses to Democratus in this same post might be of interest to you. One highlight is that communication is good and prison scenarios are not inherently bad. But players might have negative reactions to prison scenarios, so communication is a good way to avoid those negative reactions.

Telok
2020-10-28, 05:40 PM
4) Person A made a post. Person B replied. You replied to Person B. I replied to you, clarifying Person B's answer to Person A. With that additional clarification, you might see Person B's reply to Person A in a new light. There are limitations to my ability to clarify (I can't read minds), please consult Person B.

However I would add that my responses to Democratus in this same post might be of interest to you. One highlight is that communication is good and prison scenarios are not inherently bad. But players might have negative reactions to prison scenarios, so communication is a good way to avoid those negative reactions.

#4 is just the nature of forums, although probably not helped that I have to use my phone for all this.

I think were generally on the same wavelength. However I believe you're making some assumptions that I don't make, beyond just the D&Dism "gear = 4/5th of you character" thing. Those being that the captors/jailers are motivated to completely incapacitate their prisoners, capable of finding all the stuff, expecting immedate or constant escape attempts, respect the prisoner's abilities, can't trust the prisoners for anything, and have a nice secure place to put them. To be sure that's a rational and intelligent thing to do, pretty much what modern jailing looks like. It's jusy not my set of default assumptions for all games and scenarios.

As for OotA... Well, I called it much maligned for a reason. We had a new dm who didn't know to tell us lots stuff, use heavy handed cut scenes to provide info, and ran it as "by the book" as possible. We started with our characters having been stuffed in the starting cell literally less than an hour ago and we were out rampaging in another two hours. Everywhere we could we cut every rope, broke every bridge, set as much as possible on fire, and pushed npcs between us and the drow. Of course the party was 2 bards, cleric, warlock, and druid, because we know how D&D treats beatstick classes.

OldTrees1
2020-10-28, 07:50 PM
#4 is just the nature of forums, although probably not helped that I have to use my phone for all this.
Very true. I was just making sure the identities were clear.


I think were generally on the same wavelength. However I believe you're making some assumptions that I don't make, beyond just the D&Dism "gear = 4/5th of you character" thing. Those being that the captors/jailers are motivated to completely incapacitate their prisoners, capable of finding all the stuff, expecting immedate or constant escape attempts, respect the prisoner's abilities, can't trust the prisoners for anything, and have a nice secure place to put them. To be sure that's a rational and intelligent thing to do, pretty much what modern jailing looks like. It's jusy not my set of default assumptions for all games and scenarios.

That is an exaggeration of my position, so we are probably on an even more similar wavelength.

I am not assuming gear = 4/5th of the character, but I am assuming that without tools the rogue would be at disadvantage for unlocking the way, the wizard would (actually, let's skip the wizard since D&D hits them hard), the barbarian would be at relative disadvantage for breaking out (leverage from a crowbar is nice), and be less capable of taking down the guards (sharp rock vs greataxe). Once they have escaped, they will be lacking supplies (including food/water) and still be ill equipped to escape pursuit. It will take awhile for them to completely recover. So capable but crippled. (Sort of what OotA was looking for?)

The jailers are motivated to prevent the prisoners from escaping. That is different from completely incapacitating the prisoners. See a modern prison for examples.

The jailers are motivated to find all the stuff, but are not necessarily capable. They do have an advantage because lots of the resources are in plain sight. However maybe the Rogue might smuggle some tools in the Barbarian's stomach. Generally the vast majority of items will be detected.

The jailers are not necessarily going to expect immediate or constant escape attempts. But they would plan for how to detect, prevent, and interrupt escape attempts.

I made no abnormal assumptions about trust. The only time I commented on it was in your example where the Noble uses the power of the PC's word to keep the imprisoned. That is excessively trusting. If the trust is well placed, then that is a stronger prison than one made of iron. If the trust was foolishly placed, then that is a weaker prison than one made of wet tissue. For a more normal situation I would expect the jailer to cautiously trust the captives in some areas, but not in areas where they see the captor - captive dynamic as incentivizing the captive to fool the captor.

I am assuming the captors have a secure place to put the captives. That seems a good preparation before going out and capturing someone. What that looks like can vary based on circumstances.

Now those are my expectations at 10 Int 10 Wis. Your exaggeration sounds like a very very paranoid 14 Int 14 Wis. For captors with lower mental abilities. They might make severe mistakes.

Now is this a decent default assumption for games and scenarios? Well, I would suggest the DM communicate with the players, but Person A (initial context) is adverse to that suggestion. So in the absence of communication, I think it is reasonable to expect captors to behave to their mental abilities rather than presume the DM will inject the Idiot Ball or Deus Ex Machina. If in the presence of DM & Player communication, then see that communication for a better default assumption.


As for OotA... Well, I called it much maligned for a reason. We had a new dm who didn't know to tell us lots stuff, use heavy handed cut scenes to provide info, and ran it as "by the book" as possible. We started with our characters having been stuffed in the starting cell literally less than an hour ago and we were out rampaging in another two hours. Everywhere we could we cut every rope, broke every bridge, set as much as possible on fire, and pushed npcs between us and the drow. Of course the party was 2 bards, cleric, warlock, and druid, because we know how D&D treats beatstick classes.

I also went through OotA. One of the newer players want to try DMing. I forget the exact composition but I believe it was Wizard, 2 Rogues (played as fistful of d6 rather than skill monkey), a Cleric, and a Fighter. We started in the cells. We had been captured in the past month, but not the past hour.

The cell was laughable to escape from. The guards were weak compared to unarmed PCs. We recovered our gear and fled down the tunnel. So far lots of idiot ball shenanigans, but we had been told we would get our gear back (this was AL), so it met my expectations for WotC AL adventure content.

Then there was the tunnel. Imagine trying to escape from drow slavers by running into the maze of tunnels that is the underdark. Only for everyone, including the DM to be surprised at how railroaded that tunnel is and for how long.

So while OotA is maligned, it is a bit better than its reputation. Especially since it encourages the DM and the players to communicate about the start and get player buy in.

Telok
2020-10-29, 12:10 AM
I also went through OotA. ...
The cell was laughable to escape from. The guards were weak compared to unarmed PCs. We recovered our gear and fled down the tunnel. So far lots of idiot ball shenanigans, but we had been told we would get our gear back (this was AL), so it met my expectations for WotC AL adventure content.

That's interesting. It sounds like it changed at some point. We were at 2nd and our guards were 5 hd with 16+ ac and two attacks, not pushovers by any means. There was some drow cleric with a tentacle thing who upcast a spell to 4th level, one of the npcs we'd been shoving out bit it. That's when got serious about cutting all the bridges (got good timing to drop her into some pool way below) and setting everything on fire. Never did get any gear except what we looted but that was ok since 1st level starting gear is pretty low end anyways.

And yeah, after that it got amazingly railroady until we went into combat as war mode and broke the dm. Poor guy.

Any ways, I think I may have a slightly more lenient view on taking PCs prisoners since I generally run things sandboxy, track reputation, ransom & parole can be a thing with the more honorable npcs, and especially important... I don't run D&D or faux medeval fantasy if at all possible. It's amazing how little fuss players make when there are lawyers and rules that they recognize, and any "gear" either has limited plot immunity or isn't required for the characters to work.

Come to think of it though... all my captures have been by legit law enforcement with the PCs seriously flubbing something blatantly illegal, often on camera. Even when they're supposed to be the heroes. But that's maybe more the players than anything. I think.

OldTrees1
2020-10-29, 12:46 AM
That's interesting. It sounds like it changed at some point.
Memories are imperfect. I think that is what happened. Although I guess the action economy can be a powerful force.


Any ways, I think I may have a slightly more lenient view on taking PCs prisoners since I generally run things sandboxy, track reputation, ransom & parole can be a thing with the more honorable npcs, and especially important... I don't run D&D or faux medeval fantasy if at all possible. It's amazing how little fuss players make when there are lawyers and rules that they recognize, and any "gear" either has limited plot immunity or isn't required for the characters to work.

Honestly, this sounds like another positive example of that DM & Player communication thing I was harping on about. With communication you can set expectations and get player buy in. (Or identify issues to work around / avoid).

Understanding why a player might have a negative reaction matters more when the communication is not happening. Partially because it helps the stubborn DM realize why the missing communication is so important. (For more I would have to defer back to Person B replying to Person A).

This is also why my "view" on taking PCs prisoner has been mostly descriptive instead of prescriptive.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-10-29, 06:22 AM
That's all very specific to D&D and it makes assumptions about the nature of the enemies, culture, and ......

Uhh... its not D&D specific, its "basically any game with a shred of versimilitude" specific. When you're captured as a prisoner of "war" or arrested by the police they don't allow you to take your gun into prison with you.

It entirely defeats the point of incarceration to permit a person to carry whatever they want into prison with them, because siezing a prisoners equipment isn't about taking it for yourself, its about preventing them from escaping or hurting themselves.



The only real D&D specific thing I observed is that about half or more of the game becomes literally unable to use their class abilities without one or more specific pieces of equipment, which can for some classes be practically unreplaceable.


But the point still generally stands. You're almost always better disengaging and retreating than surrendering. Even if you have to retreat all the way back to friendly territory, you get to make that journey as fully armed as you planned to be if you were succeeding and you don't have to rebuy all your things on return to friendly lines. If you had surrendered, you would be making the same journey without the benefit of your equipment. You will basically never make the return to friendly lines in a better state after being captured and escaping incarceration than after disengaging and retreating.



All of the times my PC's laid down their arms it was only part of the party with the expectation that the remainder effect a speedy rescue with a swift counterattack before they could be transferred out of the operational area.

Satinavian
2020-10-29, 09:32 AM
Come to think of it though... all my captures have been by legit law enforcement with the PCs seriously flubbing something blatantly illegal, often on camera. Even when they're supposed to be the heroes. But that's maybe more the players than anything. I think.Most people have said, if it comes organically from play, it is less of a problem. If players have earned their defeat, they are more likely to take it than when railroaded into it.

Also many groups don't have quarrels with law enforcement particularly often. And while be "surrendering to police" might sound somewhat safe, "surrendering to the tribe of hungry ogers", "surrendering to the Not-Zerg that have surrounded you" or "surrendering to the evil apocalypse cult with human sacrifice tradition" might be somewhat less enticing. There are many situations where even rational characters might likely choose to fight to an inevitable death.

Telok
2020-10-29, 10:34 AM
Most people have said, if it comes organically from play, it is less of a problem. If players have earned their defeat, they are more likely to take it than when railroaded into it.

Yeah, I was one of them in the first couple pages.

Part of the thing that's supposed to make apocalypse cults, zergy undead, and others a threat/horror story, is that that don't take prisoners and can't be reasoned with. It's a factor that goes into making them "scary big threat" type enemies. Thing is, that's supposed to be a rare occurance.

I'm starting to wonder if hit point and damage inflation might not tie into hard line opposition (very vary few people are actually in that camp) to surrender & prisoners. Take a game like Call of Cthulhu, nobody (people, not monsters) ever really goes beyond the normal human range of toughness and a few good punches by someone strong can k.o. a guard. A nice crit shank with a shiv could one shot some guards. D&D though gets weird, guards could have 40+ hp and most people would throw 1 - 3 damage punches at any level, strangulation and wrestling don't generally work, and of course the first thing jailers need to do is shut down all casting. Parties that aren't, say, 12th+ level or such may be basically incapable of effectively fighting a guard or two.

Does anyone know of other games than D&D/PF & knock-offs that has serious hp & damage inflation that isn't a supers game*? I'm wondering how capture & prison scenarios would run in those.

* Supers games run differently, have less crippling gear reliance, the guards are mooks, etc., etc. Thus they don't seem to run into these issues.

OldTrees1
2020-10-29, 10:55 AM
I'm starting to wonder if hit point and damage inflation might not tie into hard line opposition (very vary few people are actually in that camp) to surrender & prisoners. Take a game like Call of Cthulhu, nobody (people, not monsters) ever really goes beyond the normal human range of toughness and a few good punches by someone strong can k.o. a guard. A nice crit shank with a shiv could one shot some guards. D&D though gets weird, guards could have 40+ hp and most people would throw 1 - 3 damage punches at any level, strangulation and wrestling don't generally work, and of course the first thing jailers need to do is shut down all casting. Parties that aren't, say, 12th+ level or such may be basically incapable of effectively fighting a guard or two.

Aside: I respect your opening qualifier.


This is an interesting question. I don't have an answer but I wanted to expand it a bit. There are 4 cases:
NPCs are hardy or they are not
PCs are hardy or they are not

Mentally I am using 1st level D&D and 5th level D&D as mental models.
In games where the NPCs are hardy and the PCs are not, capture might be a game over.
In games where both are fragile, then the PCs have to be careful because the odds are against them. However escapes can be quick.
In games where both are hardy, the PCs have to be careful AND alarms are almost guaranteed.
In games where the PCs are hardy and the NPCs are not, the PCs can escape on a whim.

kyoryu
2020-10-29, 11:54 AM
There are many situations where even rational characters might likely choose to fight to an inevitable death.

... or retreat.

Satinavian
2020-10-29, 01:32 PM
If retreat is an option, you won't even consider a surrender.

JoeJ
2020-11-01, 06:10 PM
Your players might be more okay with being captured if it happens in a "fail forward" sort of way.

To start with, I wouldn't force it. I'd just let the party locate the BBEG's headquarters when they're not powerful enough to have much of a chance. If they win anyway, fantastic! I'd congratulate them and begin planning the next adventure. The most likely result, however, is a TPK, where "K" stands for "knockout" instead of "kill". Why would the villains not kill them? Because the BBEG likes their tenacity and skill and wants to recruit them. So the BBEG explains his whole evil plan, accidentally letting slip some information that the party can use to defeat him ("It's not your fault you lost. You couldn't have known that my sole weakness is the blossom of the rare Macguffin Plant that only grows in the swamps of Questination."), then offers to make them his lieutenants. If they refuse, he locks them in some sort of deathtrap and goes off to he attend to the furtherance of his plans. "Sorry that I can't stay to watch your demise, but my destiny awaits!"

Is it corny? Of course it is! But it turns being captured from a net negative into a positive: once the party escapes the trap, they have gained some important information that might make it possible to defeat the BBEG the next time they meet. And it's an instantly recognizable trope that lets the players know that I don't intend for them to be prisoners for very long.

If you really want to do a longer term prisoner story, I think the players will be more likely to be on board after you've pulled this one off once or twice and gotten them used to the idea that being captured isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Pex
2020-11-02, 12:35 AM
Your players might be more okay with being captured if it happens in a "fail forward" sort of way.

To start with, I wouldn't force it. I'd just let the party locate the BBEG's headquarters when they're not powerful enough to have much of a chance. If they win anyway, fantastic! I'd congratulate them and begin planning the next adventure. The most likely result, however, is a TPK, where "K" stands for "knockout" instead of "kill". Why would the villains not kill them? Because the BBEG likes their tenacity and skill and wants to recruit them. So the BBEG explains his whole evil plan, accidentally letting slip some information that the party can use to defeat him ("It's not your fault you lost. You couldn't have known that my sole weakness is the blossom of the rare Macguffin Plant that only grows in the swamps of Questination."), then offers to make them his lieutenants. If they refuse, he locks them in some sort of deathtrap and goes off to he attend to the furtherance of his plans. "Sorry that I can't stay to watch your demise, but my destiny awaits!"

Is it corny? Of course it is! But it turns being captured from a net negative into a positive: once the party escapes the trap, they have gained some important information that might make it possible to defeat the BBEG the next time they meet. And it's an instantly recognizable trope that lets the players know that I don't intend for them to be prisoners for very long.

If you really want to do a longer term prisoner story, I think the players will be more likely to be on board after you've pulled this one off once or twice and gotten them used to the idea that being captured isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Once played a game where we wanted to rescue people kidnapped by goblins, but we had no idea where they were taken. Meanwhile we fought some goblins, but it was a TPK honestly but unfortunately happened. However, the goblins were under orders so they didn't really kill us. They took us prisoner to where they took everyone we wanted to rescue, so we found their lair anyway and then escaped rescuing everyone. It was our plan all along. That's out story, and we're sticking to it.

Duff
2020-11-03, 09:33 PM
"Level appropriate" enemies assume that you've got WBL-appropriate gear, spellbooks, etc and will hard-stop you if you don't have the right counter-gear.

That's true. But your GM should be taking that into account when they design the fight. Level appropriate Tucker's Kobolds are not the same level the book will say.
A bow dependent party will suffer on a windy day, while a party who are light on metal will find a rust monster a pretty easy fight.

So an unequipped party (maybe they were prisoners, maybe they were just at a party) will need the difficulty dialed back a bit. Why is that a problem?

PhoenixPhyre
2020-11-03, 09:41 PM
That's true. But your GM should be taking that into account when they design the fight. Level appropriate Tucker's Kobolds are not the same level the book will say.
A bow dependent party will suffer on a windy day, while a party who are light on metal will find a rust monster a pretty easy fight.

So an unequipped party (maybe they were prisoners, maybe they were just at a party) will need the difficulty dialed back a bit. Why is that a problem?

At least in my understanding of 3e, a severely-below WBL party in anything but the first few levels is in a weird spot. If you build encounters to what they should have by WBL standards, they get destroyed because the game math assumes that gear scales with level. If you rescale for the no-WBL, some classes are way above the cuve (eschew materials means spellcasters are mostly at par) while others are struggling. So you make the pre-existing disparities even worse. And then you run into the problem--

if these people could capture a group of full-powered heroes with all their gear....why are they so weak now?

Pex
2020-11-04, 02:05 AM
It entirely defeats the point of incarceration to permit a person to carry whatever they want into prison with them, because siezing a prisoners equipment isn't about taking it for yourself, its about preventing them from escaping or hurting themselves.




I get a laugh about this in Star Wars The Old Republic. In one of the planet stories you are given the Light Side option of letting yourself be taken prisoner in exchange for the bad guy releasing captured citizens. You know you'll be freed soon after else the game is over, but you go with it. The dopiness is you get to keep your weapon, whether it be a light saber or blaster. You need it for game play, but it makes no sense in story why you keep your weapon. It's only your word you won't try to escape? The former captured citizens immediate break you out anyway, and having your weapon you fight along side them against your guards.

GrayDeath
2020-11-04, 09:57 AM
I get a laugh about this in Star Wars The Old Republic. In one of the planet stories you are given the Light Side option of letting yourself be taken prisoner in exchange for the bad guy releasing captured citizens. You know you'll be freed soon after else the game is over, but you go with it. The dopiness is you get to keep your weapon, whether it be a light saber or blaster. You need it for game play, but it makes no sense in story why you keep your weapon. It's only your word you won't try to escape? The former captured citizens immediate break you out anyway, and having your weapon you fight along side them against your guards.

Lets be honest, even without your weapon, any force user in that situation would wreck their opponents, and you are a jedi in that case and hence supposed to be "my Word Is Gold" during a galactic war....why again? ^^

PhoenixPhyre
2020-11-04, 11:33 AM
Lets be honest, even without your weapon, any force user in that situation would wreck their opponents, and you are a jedi in that case and hence supposed to be "my Word Is Gold" during a galactic war....why again? ^^

Except you're not necessarily a Jedi in that game. Or a force user.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-11-04, 12:19 PM
Ashoka lightsabers are taken away when she's detained on Coruscant, and on Lola Saylu the jedi master they rescue has to be given one by Obi Wan, so there's definite a precedent for disarming the Jedi and it is just stupid to throw a Jedi in prison without removing her/his lightsaber.

That said, Ashoka escapes the gang in season 7, she's able to escape the prison using only the force, though to be fair, they didn't know she was a Jedi when they detained her.

Spiderswims
2020-11-04, 01:33 PM
So, my question is, why do so many DMs, especially new DMs, need to strong arm players into going along with their adventures?

Likewise, why are players so utterly afraid of allowing themselves to be captured and taken prisoner?

Is there any right way to run a jailbreak / slave revolt scenario?

Most DMs, like most people sadly, have the default belief that tyranny and force are the best way to do things.

Again, this is a natural reaction. Plus it is seen as no fun.

Yes.

The prisoner problem your talking about is more of a game problem, and it's simply that many GMs don't have the will or ability or skill to take the game to the next level.

The vast majority of players will have their characters fight to the death by default. But if you remove the fight, well, then they can't fight to the death.

And many games make it hard for a character to die, and D&D is no exception. The PC might be disabled and unconscious at -2 hit points, but they are not dead. The PC can be captured and saved and brought back to living.

And if a foe really, truly wants to capture anyone, the D&D rules are full of ways to do this. Traps, items, spells, and all sorts of magic and more. PCs can't fight to the death if they are magically turned to stone.

Plus there might be dozens of reasons a group of PC does not put up a fight.

GrayDeath
2020-11-04, 02:31 PM
Except you're not necessarily a Jedi in that game. Or a force user.

What, there are People NOT palying jedi when playing Republic?!

No Way!!















^^ Of course you are correct in that this quest is a fully republic wide one, still the galaxies smartest smuggler and an absolute Elitee Special Forces guy would have easy play with just a hidden butter knife and some semi-empty can of Coffe whitener.

Duff
2020-11-04, 05:37 PM
if these people could capture a group of full-powered heroes with all their gear....why are they so weak now?
That's actually pretty easy - The party are weaker, so the guards on the cell need not be a strong as the force used to capture them and most organisations that keep prisoners have an interest in efficient use of resources.

But you do raise a valid point - for an escape to be plausible, the captors need to have made a mistake: Maybe underestimated the abilities of the PCs, maybe underestimating their willingness to fight. Clever PCs can make that happen. The tricky monk who's allowed themself to be mistaken for a badly equipped fighter stands front and centre here (or would if they weren't bouncing off the walls on the way up to the guard tower already...)
Or the captors don't have a choice - at the crucial moment they simply don't have enough resources to do everything so they pull guards elsewhere and hope they can get the prisoner situation under control again later


As to the in-party balance - A prison escape also offers GMs plenty of option to shape the challenge to allow everyone their moment - anti-magic cuffs which are harder to remove than normal chains. More encounters than go into a normal day, clusters of guards that need to be fireballed, but then the mage is out of fireballs, heal spells all used up because healing the prisoners in the infirmary is part of the plan...
But if your GM doesn't have the skills and willingness to do that, does it matter? If you're playing D&D 3e, you've signed up for a bit of power gap anyway, so what if it's even more obvious for this part of the adventure? If the players care about balance very much at all, presumably the GM can give those who aren't winning the escape some spotlight later in the game
And of course, that isn't an issue in groups where balance between classes isn't something they care about.

So to summarise, if it's an issue the GM should be managing it, in a prison escape as much as the rest of the game.

PhoenixPhyre
2020-11-04, 05:56 PM
That's actually pretty easy - The party are weaker, so the guards on the cell need not be a strong as the force used to capture them and most organisations that keep prisoners have an interest in efficient use of resources.

But you do raise a valid point - for an escape to be plausible, the captors need to have made a mistake: Maybe underestimated the abilities of the PCs, maybe underestimating their willingness to fight. Clever PCs can make that happen
Or the captors don't have a choice - at the crucial moment they simply don't have enough resources to do everything so they pull guards elsewhere and hope they can get the prisoner situation under control again later

For me, that would take expert DM telegraphing skills to make it feel like the enemies weren't holding the idiot ball. Too easy to seem purely fortuitous, in the "dm fiat" sense. They just "happened" to come under pressure. Etc.

Not impossible, but not easy to do right.

But then again, I'm not the type to blow up a game over this sort of thing in the first place. It might make me roll my eyes, but that's about it.

Talakeal
2020-11-09, 06:35 PM
Sorry for the lack of replies the last few weeks, I have been unwell and was hospitalized.

Don't have anything concrete to add, but I was thinking that maybe some of the divergent opinions might have something to do with the "old school / new school" divide that alleges that old school players look to themselves for agency while new school players look to their character sheets. I don't really buy it, but the idea of having a character taken prisoner or suffer a set back might feel like a sharp loss of agency to some people because it curtails the number of options on their sheet. Just a thought.

Mechalich
2020-11-09, 08:32 PM
Sorry for the lack of replies the last few weeks, I have been unwell and was hospitalized.

Don't have anything concrete to add, but I was thinking that maybe some of the divergent opinions might have something to do with the "old school / new school" divide that alleges that old school players look to themselves for agency while new school players look to their character sheets. I don't really buy it, but the idea of having a character taken prisoner or suffer a set back might feel like a sharp loss of agency to some people because it curtails the number of options on their sheet. Just a thought.

Being taken prisoner is a sharp loss of agency. That's what imprisonment definitionally is - a drastic limitation on one's freedom.

The simple reality is that viable escape scenarios - from a marginally competent enemy without help from someone on the inside - are extremely rare. This is doubly true when considered in any sort of short timeframe, as most complex prison escape scenarios involve weeks or months of planning and they still usually fail or result in very short-term recapture.

People who surrender in war don't expect to escape. They expect that they'll either be imprisoned for the duration of the war and then released or amnestied when it concludes, or that they'll be exchanged for prisoners taken by their side. The mostly likely outcome of someone being taken prisoner in battle, really, is that you cut to 'six months later' immediately thereafter. And there are campaign narratives where that's a perfectly acceptable outcome. If your party is just a freelance mercenary band fighting small scale conflicts in not-Europe with a side of occasional monster slaying, being out of the game for a little while isn't a big deal. It's only a problem when you're trying to halt world-ending threats right now that imprisonment becomes such a huge problem.

Quertus
2020-11-09, 08:39 PM
It's only a problem when you're trying to halt world-ending threats right now that imprisonment becomes such a huge problem.

Oh man, I hadn't even considered that! Yeah, "we're on a short timer to the end of the world" is definitely a reason to prefer to fight to the death over being captured - who wants to await the end of the world in prison?

Talakeal
2020-11-10, 03:56 AM
People who surrender in war don't expect to escape. They expect that they'll either be imprisoned for the duration of the war and then released or amnestied when it concludes, or that they'll be exchanged for prisoners taken by their side. The mostly likely outcome of someone being taken prisoner in battle, really, is that you cut to 'six months later' immediately thereafter. And there are campaign narratives where that's a perfectly acceptable outcome. If your party is just a freelance mercenary band fighting small scale conflicts in not-Europe with a side of occasional monster slaying, being out of the game for a little while isn't a big deal. It's only a problem when you're trying to halt world-ending threats right now that imprisonment becomes such a huge problem.

I would tend to agree.

But again, if you are facing a world ending problem right now, maybe its a good idea to take the route that is most likely to save the world rather than simply jumping into the jaws of death because your pride demands the rest of the world be sacrificed to keep you free and undefeated?


Oh man, I hadn't even considered that! Yeah, "we're on a short timer to the end of the world" is definitely a reason to prefer to fight to the death over being captured - who wants to await the end of the world in prison?

I have a really hard time imagining a scenario where this is actually true and isn't, effectively, just a player acting childish and saying they would rather not play that risk the possibility of loss.

Also the idea of the "end of the world," is, even in fiction, hyperbole 99 out of 100 times; it is almost always just shorthand for "a significant setback" rather than actually being "the end".


Being taken prisoner is a sharp loss of agency. That's what imprisonment definitionally is - a drastic limitation on one's freedom.

Player freedom =/= character freedom.

Having a character sit in jail for a month while their random is arranged is no more of a loss in agency for the players than, say, travelling to the adventure location by taking a ship or marching with an army.

Likewise, being told "You got captured last week, so tonight's session is about breaking out of the slave mines," has fundamentally no less player agency than "Last week you find the map to the lost gold mine, and so this week's session will be about breaking into the lost mine."

Player agency is about being able to make meaningful and informed choices about how the scenario plays out, not about being able to do whatever you want with no regard to in universe limitations or real world logistics.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-11-10, 12:07 PM
I have a really hard time imagining a scenario where this is actually true and isn't, effectively, just a player acting childish and saying they would rather not play that risk the possibility of loss.

Also the idea of the "end of the world," is, even in fiction, hyperbole 99 out of 100 times; it is almost always just shorthand for "a significant setback" rather than actually being "the end".



I don't have a hard time imagining this. If figurative end of the world [or end of the free world, or the world of men and elves, or the whatever] is on the line, and you're captured as PoW's by the forces of the enemy who are presumably the forces causing the end of the world, you're effectively done and the world ends/humanity gets conquered and enslaved/whatever while you watch from the PoW camp.


Being taken prisoners is pretty catastrophic. Basically all casters who depend on their spells cease to function immediately and most can't resume function until they return to base to buy their foci and spellbooks anew. Martials need weapons, and to even defeat armed and armored guards at all is a tall order with your unarmed attacks, though they're better off because if they defeat the guards then they can theoretically fight at reduced efficiency compared to before. And assuming you want your casters to participate in the final fight, you need to return to your jumping off point anyway [escorting your dead-weight casters] to re-acquire their stuff, and then re-launch the mission.



It's essentially always better to decide that discretion is the better part of valor and retreat from a losing encounter, go to ground to hide, rest and find another way around than it is to surrender. And after level 5, breaking contact becomes an almost trivial problem for an average party, so it's just about not getting found by search parties. The worst case is you're forced to retreat back to your jumping-off point, which is the same place you'd be if you had surrendered, except you don't have to re-buy all your gear and you had it with you on the long march back.



I have had players surrender in my games. However, it's never been the whole party, and there's always been an expectation that the remainder of the party will counterattack to free them and recover their equipment essentially immediately.

zinycor
2020-11-10, 12:12 PM
So, in the end there is only a question that matters.
Is your particular group willing to go through this?

If yes, then go ahead. If not, then you either let it be and move on to an alternative OR you begin trying to convince your players that it will be an experience that will enhance the game.

OldTrees1
2020-11-10, 12:48 PM
So, in the end there is only a question that matters.
Is your particular group willing to go through this?

If yes, then go ahead. If not, then you either let it be and move on to an alternative OR you begin trying to convince your players that it will be an experience that will enhance the game.

Relevant quote from many pages ago.


On the opposite side of the screen, anytime I have ever tried to run a "jailbreak" type scenario, the players protest most strongly and will rather go down in a blaze or glory and suffer a TPK rather than surrender or allow themselves to be taken prisoner, and I have long since given up even trying.

It sounds like you and your group object to this type of scenario. It is good you listened to and heeded that feedback.

If you have player buy-in, then it can work. Your group does not buy-in, so it didn't work, so you stopped.

zynicor does a great job of summarizing the 2nd post of the thread and the thread in general.

Telok
2020-11-10, 01:14 PM
I recall now that Champions published a book on a prison in the setting that had some discussion of this stuff plus a half-dozen or more adventure seeds and I think a short adventure.

Of course Champions is a supers game with non-D&D tropes, and it's really unusual to build supers characters that are helpless if you take away their favorite sword and spell component pouch. Even if you did manage to make a crippled character it's a modern setting with the possibility of care packages & conjugal visits sneaking stuff in. Plus with it being in a justice system that isn't given to summary executions and a distinct lack of torture & mutilation there's no reason to assume captives are stapled to a wall until tbeir heads are chpooed off.

Most of the basis for the supers prison was that each section was designed to hold different types of villans. The magic users got a section with digital locks, the techs got a section with magic locks, the super strengths got superheavy doors, the speedsters got motion detector traps, etc., etc. Naturally if you could slip a magic invisibility pill to the tech prisoners, or an electronic lockpick the the magic users, all heck broke loose. There were safeguards and the guards watched for that stuff of course. But like any system that depends on pitting human vigilance against human ingenuity it can't catch everything.

icefractal
2020-11-10, 03:32 PM
Don't have anything concrete to add, but I was thinking that maybe some of the divergent opinions might have something to do with the "old school / new school" divide that alleges that old school players look to themselves for agency while new school players look to their character sheets. I don't really buy it, but the idea of having a character taken prisoner or suffer a set back might feel like a sharp loss of agency to some people because it curtails the number of options on their sheet. Just a thought.Is this like the RPG way of calling people millennials? :smalltongue:

If we're throwing out theories, I'm going to say it depends on Game as World/Story/Challenge. If the game is a story, this is just a chapter of it. Some people will still dislike the story going in that direction, but in general you know this is not just a perma-loss because that's not how the story would go. If the game is a challenge, then this is just another part of that challenge, and you know that - like an adventure game - you'll have the tools you need to escape if you combine them the right way.

On the other hand, if the game is a world, then there's no guarantee escape is convenient or even possible. If the people who captured you are diligent in their security there might not be any guards sleeping conveniently close to the bars, or breaches of security where you're left unattended in the corridor. And as for getting your stuff back, you have to ask what the PCs would do if the situation was reversed (in 99% of games, they would keep or sell anything valuable).

Of course like most RPG theories, this is an oversimplification at best.

Xervous
2020-11-10, 03:53 PM
Is this like the RPG way of calling people millennials? :smalltongue:


I dunno. The engineer me says the rules wouldn’t be there if we weren’t intended to use them most of the time (assuming it’s not a shoddy system). Anyone can pull out creative ideas given context and setting, just look at all the various fan theories and what ifs. Free form RP and other superlite systems being a thing that I jump for when I don’t want the burden of numbers, I think it’s a safe assumption that an informed group is choosing the right system with the amount of minutiae they’re comfortable with.

Finding an informed group however, that’s apparently the challenge. See: people for whom tabletop and D&D are synonymous.

Talakeal
2020-11-10, 06:56 PM
Thinking more about player versus character agency, and the more I think about it the more I think they have very little overlap.

For example; a character with super high agency is probably going to choose to be a member of the idle rich and spend most of their days drinking and shopping and playing games and attending orgies and performances and the like. But, as a player character, this would probably bore most players to tears. They would much rather be having adventures and exploring dungeons, although I seriously doubt the character would choose to be facing death, disease, and dismemberment fighting horrifying monsters in a dark and slimy hole.

Likewise, character power kind of negates choices. For example, in the adventure I am currently working on, the players need to get an artifact from a dragon, and the dragon is too powerful to defeat in a straight fight. So, the players are going to have to make plans and choices; they might decide to sneak in, or distract the dragon, or lure it into a trap, or talk to it, or sacrifice someone, or bribe it; to me this is a lot more agency than normal as they they now actually have to think and make choices; if I simply levelled them up to the dragons level or gave them some powerful magic sword of dragon slaying, all of these choices disappear in favor of the direct approach. You know what they say about problems when all you have is a hammer...



Is this like the RPG way of calling people millennials? :smalltongue:

Pretty much, yeah. As I said, I don't really subscribe to the theory, especially not in terms of generations, but there does seem to be a sort of, difference in priorities among different gamers. For example; if you ask someone to tell you about their character, some people will discuss history, some personality, some appearance, and some a long list of powers and feats; and I think it is probably this latter who sees being imprisoned as losing agency.

For me, I see tons of agency in a prison scenario. For example, I can choose to get in good with the corrupt warden or not, I can choose to protest conditions or keep my mouth shut, I can choose to stand up to prison yard bullies or mind my own business, I can choose to secretly dig an escape tunnel or wait for my time to be up, I can choose to share food with fellow inmates or keep it for myself, I can choose to try and hide contraband or build my own weapons in secret, I can choose to keep my head down and avoid the guards attentions or I can defiantly stand up to them, etc. etc. To me, these are all very fun and interesting choices that say a lot about my character, and give me options for RP that I wouldn't have in a more traditional dungeon crawl.

But, on the other hand, I do have fewer "weapons" in my arsenal, less equipment and the like, and so for other people this might be seen as a drastic loss in agency.



I don't have a hard time imagining this. If figurative end of the world [or end of the free world, or the world of men and elves, or the whatever] is on the line, and you're captured as PoW's by the forces of the enemy who are presumably the forces causing the end of the world, you're effectively done and the world ends/humanity gets conquered and enslaved/whatever while you watch from the PoW camp.

Keep in mind, the alternative here is death. IMO, you are going to do a lot more good in the long run surviving and forming a resistance against the new evil order than you will throwing your life away in a hopeless fight.

Again, "the end of the world" is almost never literal in fantasy, people normally just use it as shorthand for "the bad guy takes power," and fantasy is full of stories of bad guys being overthrown despite having all of the power.


Being taken prisoners is pretty catastrophic. Basically all casters who depend on their spells cease to function immediately and most can't resume function until they return to base to buy their foci and spellbooks anew. Martials need weapons, and to even defeat armed and armored guards at all is a tall order with your unarmed attacks, though they're better off because if they defeat the guards then they can theoretically fight at reduced efficiency compared to before. And assuming you want your casters to participate in the final fight, you need to return to your jumping off point anyway [escorting your dead-weight casters] to re-acquire their stuff, and then re-launch the mission.

This assumes very specific characters in a very specific game. Even in a gear heavy game like 3.5, you can easily make a character who performs nearly at full efficiency without their gear. Some people might even appreciate it, a monk or psionicist might really appreciate having their chance to shine in such a situation, in much the same way that a ranger would appreciate a wilderness adventure or a cleric would enjoy getting a chance to let loose on the undead.



So, in the end there is only a question that matters.
Is your particular group willing to go through this?

If yes, then go ahead. If not, then you either let it be and move on to an alternative OR you begin trying to convince your players that it will be an experience that will enhance the game.


Relevant quote from many pages ago.

It sounds like you and your group object to this type of scenario. It is good you listened to and heeded that feedback.

If you have player buy-in, then it can work. Your group does not buy-in, so it didn't work, so you stopped.

Zynicor does a great job of summarizing the 2nd post of the thread and the thread in general.

It would be nice to have another tool in my chest so that I can shake the things up with a jailbreak scenario if the urge strikes me or a buy such a module; blanket bans don't really help the game. But, on the other hand, its not exactly a big deal, it just means I go back to the drawing board for one scenario every five years or so.

What is a big deal is the players refuse to surrender when they get in over their head, which means that I have to either end the campaign or resort to some sort of deus ex machina. It would be REALLY nice if I could just say "The police fine you a thousand dollars and sentence you to a hundred hours of community service" and then get back to the game rather than "You die in a bloody shooutout with the cops, again. Time to spend next session making new characters and then we will start the campaign that we have all invested the past six months in over from scratch."

PhoenixPhyre
2020-11-10, 08:02 PM
I think there's also something other than just agency here. Different people play TTRPGs for different reasons. For some, being powerful is part of the draw. They're less there for "being in a story" and more for "getting to do things I can't do in real life, including being a powerful person." So putting them in prison is, to them, a bad thing because they're no longer powerful people. They're less interested in being the underdog or cleverly wriggling their way out of things and more interested in a "power fantasy"[1] experience. And that's as valid a way to play as anything else...as long as everyone's on the same page.

I don't feel the same way, but I understand the feeling (especially having played with teenagers a lot).

[1] while that's often used pejoratively for people who don't ever want to lose, there's a valid use for people wanting to get to "play with their (character's) toys". Which include abilities, equipment, etc. So putting them in jail makes them feel like they're being told that they can't play the game they want to play.