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Talakeal
2021-06-12, 10:18 PM
I am about to start a new campaign using my own system (link in sig!).

As many of you know, I have had a long history of disastrous gaming groups.

One thing I am trying to impress upon my players is that they have agency, and that their own decisions matter. It seems like they expect the DM to railroad them, and to dictate every turn of the game, to ignore both player agency and the dice. I want them to succeed by their own merits, and to acknowledge that not everything that happens is the DM's fault. In short, I am trying to convey the following:


1: I run a fair table, I do not fudge dice.
2: I do not put them in railroads of situations with only one correct solution.
3: Their character is theirs to control, but their actions have consequences.
4: I am trying to run a plausible world that is dangerous and where most NPCs are competent.
5: They can build their character however they like, but this has repercussions, both their strengths and their weaknesses will matter.
6: Teamwork and party synergy is the strongest form of power-gaming.
7: I am going to use a variety of enemies that are not tailored to defeat any one PC or the group as a whole.
8: NPCs will be of appropriate challenges, and are going to be played with tactics according to their intelligence.


To this end, I wrote the following letter to them:

Your character is yours to build, but understand that in doing so you are making decisions which have consequences. Overly specializing means you excel in one area, but may be useless and bored when that area isn’t relevant. Likewise, a character who foregoes defense for offense may find themselves incapacitated too often to make use of their strengths, while one who foregoes offense for more defense might simply be ignored in favor of softer targets and contributing little.

Likewise, I tend to play enemies smart, and they will tend to use whatever methods are at their disposal to target your weaknesses. If you have a low strength, expect to be tripped or grappled; if you have no ranged weapon, expect to be kited; if you have no armor, expect to take a lot of damage, if you have low fortitude expect poison to be a problem, and if you have low resolve expect to fall prey to mind control or magic when it shows up.

I will be using a wide array of enemy types and locations; this means that there shouldn’t be one offense or defense that will be the key too everything. Some characters will be better in some sessions than others, but it will all more or less balance out in the end.

The most effective form of power gaming is synergizing your abilities with those of your comrades and working together as a team.

This game is going to be fair, but ruthless. There are no house rules in place to protect your characters, and if you make a mistake or bite off more than you can chew, I will not step in to save you.

I know it’s frustrating to lose, and if something bad happens to your character I know most people’s first instinct is to find something or someone to blame and then lash out at it, but understand that when you do that you are going to put everyone else on edge, which will make the next instance that much more severe.

A note for newer players; Brian, Bob, and I have been gaming together for decades, and we all have long memories. If one of us starts bitching about something that happened long ago, please regard it as the ramblings of a grumpy old man rather than a legitimate piece of gaming advice.

I will not put in problems that require one specific solution. If your first idea doesn’t work, please don’t become frustrated. Instead, try a different approach; do not assume you are in a no win situation or a puzzle which requires a very specific answer.


Challenge and Rewards:
Most missions will be calibrated against the standard party following the difficulty guidelines in the book.

There will occasionally be a high risk / high reward or low risk / low reward mission when it makes sense, but these are rare.

Completing a mission successfully rewards five wealth. There will also be up to five optional objectives which can further increase wealth.

The average mission will deplete most of your resources; i.e. vitality, mana, destiny, and charged artifacts or abilities. What you have left over can be used to help accomplish optional objectives or saved for activities during the recovery phase such as crafting or gambling.

If you struggle, which you sometimes will, and it can be the result of poor tactics, bad dice rolls, character builds which are weak against the particulars of the mission, or balancing mistakes on my part, you can usually pull through by taking on debts; usually in the form of potions or mercenaries, which will reduce your wealth.

If you feel you cannot possibly complete the mission without risking your characters life, it is permissible to turn back; but doing so should only be a last resort as you will fall drastically behind the wealth curve and may alienate your patrons or otherwise let opportunities slip away.

The ideal Heart of Darkness character is brave, yet cunning. The objective of the game is to use your resources wisely, making the maximum impact for as little expenditure as possible, so that your resources will carry you as far as you can, completing the mission, all optional objectives, and having some left over for the recovery phase.

Note on Challenge:

These are my statistics for past playtests:

Players complete 93% of missions they attempt.

The average mission is worth seven wealth after bonus objectives and debts.

Player characters expend, on average, 80% of their resources in a given mission.


But, when upon reading the draft, my most level headed and trusted player summed it up as "I am hardcore, and I play to win! You will all die, and when you do don't come crying to me like a bitch!" which is not exactly what I was going for.

And suggestions for how I can better convey what I am trying to say?

OldTrees1
2021-06-12, 11:05 PM
Getting players to recognize they have agency is easy:
Just tell them the boundaries of the campaign and then say "your characters have full agency within those constraints".

For example I ran 5E campaign Curse of Strahd. I told the players their PCs will be brought to Barovia, the characters will be unable to leave, the economy of Barovia is poor but there is a limited way to trade with the outside world. Everything else is up to your characters.

Getting players to recognize the extent of their agency is harder:
The best way to reinforce this lesson is for the Player to "try to get away with something" or otherwise test their preconceptions and discover they were already allowed to do that.

For example in the 5E campaign Curse of Strahd the party started making jokes about how "they don't actually know that Strahd is the enemy". These jokes mostly hinged on the PCs not knowing enough about Strahd yet juxtaposed with the players' preconceptions of the "intended plot". As the GM I laughed along with the players, and then said "I don't know if Strahd is the enemy. I'll find out what you decide".




@Talakeal
As always your group is unique and the easy general answer doesn't apply to your group.

However did you notice your most level headed and trusted player summed it up as "Talakeal makes it too difficult". That was not a comment about agency. That was a comment about difficulty.

Now, why did they think you were talking about the difficulty? *Takes time to reread the Open Letter* Wait, is 99% of that letter about difficulty or is 100% of it about difficulty? The most I saw about agency was "I will not put in problems that require one specific solution." which is a negligible statement regarding agency (unless it is a railroad).


How about surprising them with examples of what they can do. Who decides the campaign themes and goals? Who decides who the party with oppose? Who decides what part of the world the party will travel to? Does the party need to stay on this continent? Can the party open a store? Can the party found an organization? Etc


PS:
You, your system, and your players continue to communicate that the campaign / system is too difficult for your group.
I wonder, what if characters in Heart of Darkness could self heal Vitality x 4 damage per mission. Just say each point healed takes 5 minutes to avoid it impacting combat. You still have attrition, but now it is attrition of a source of healing rather than attrition of combat health. That could help the impression of difficulty.

Saintheart
2021-06-12, 11:18 PM
Likewise, I tend to play enemies smart, and they will tend to use whatever methods are at their disposal to target your weaknesses. If you have a low strength, expect to be tripped or grappled; if you have no ranged weapon, expect to be kited; if you have no armor, expect to take a lot of damage, if you have low fortitude expect poison to be a problem, and if you have low resolve expect to fall prey to mind control or magic when it shows up.

I'll be brutally honest: I would regard the above section as a red flag if I got this from a DM.

I presume you're just trying to provide examples of weaknesses, which is okay. However, this section leaves the unintentional impression that you're going to be using your knowledge of the character sheets to go for the weakest aspect of each character in each encounter. When playing I'd come to regard that as BS in pretty short order because it obviates any character I build, since unless I optimise or consult a character-building guide to cover all my weaknesses, it makes no difference what character I bring or what skills I bring to the encounter; my weakest aspect will always be targeted. When I read this passage, as a player, I hear: "I, your DM, won't even bother pretending that the hobgoblins were waiting around for a bunch of random travellers. I'm going to be giving those hobgoblins a copy of your CS and lots of time for them to study it and work out the most optimal strategy to kill you, as well as a heads-up when you're coming round the bend."

Or at least that's the emotional response I have on reading this passage, and it's the emotional response you have to worry about more than the facts or information with something like this.

I'd suggest taking out everything after the words "I tend to play enemies smart." And then go into your next paragraph about a wide variety of enemy locations and types.


This game is going to be fair, but ruthless. There are no house rules in place to protect your characters, and if you make a mistake or bite off more than you can chew, I will not step in to save you.

I know it’s frustrating to lose, and if something bad happens to your character I know most people’s first instinct is to find something or someone to blame and then lash out at it, but understand that when you do that you are going to put everyone else on edge, which will make the next instance that much more severe.

Again, I think there's unintentional impressions left here. I'm presuming the desire is to be upfront with the players, but on first reading that second paragraph has a pretty strong whiff of patronising. And the first paragraph has a pretty strong smell of advertising that you're going to be merciless with players. It also leaves the impression that you're not going to be amenable to reason or argument from the players in a grey area ... and there are always grey areas in a RPG. Again, if I was reading that as a player honestly I would see that a big red flag. It's your prerogative to put this in here, but if your prospective pool of players is mostly casuals who aren't going to methodically build heavily optimised builds, then don't be surprised if this sort of note puts them off the game. I would remove everything after "fair but ruthless". It adds nothing to it.

Maybe in its place put up what you told us in your notes: "The world I'm giving you is dangerous and it's one where most NPCs are competent combatants." See how that gives the impression that it's the world that's a serial killer and not you?

More generally on 'friendlying' up a document: use contractions. "You're" is more relatable than "you are."

Also, consider making your expressions less passive: instead of "The most effective form of power gaming is synergizing your abilities with those of your comrades and working together as a team," try "D&D is a team game. A party of four characters who support each other and cover each other's weak spots will make out a lot better than four individuals working independently."


If you struggle, which you sometimes mightwill, and it can be the result of poor tactics, bad dice rolls, character builds which are weak against the particulars of the mission, or balancing mistakes on my part, you can usually pull through by taking on debts; usually in the form of potions or mercenaries. Those are costs you'll have to bear from your own richeswhich will reduce your wealth.

Reworked this bit with strikethroughs. You're trying to tell these guys that their main "helpline" is to take a loan or buy some potions, which will cut their gold pieces. You don't need to get into the rest of it, especially where you mention balancing mistakes on your part. That leaves the impression that the players bear the cost of your mistakes as DM, which, unless you want a player revolt, you should never tell them outright. Besides ... DMs don't make mistakes. :D



EDIT: In fact, if it came to an open letter to your players I actually like your numbered list as a statement of the campaign's expectations and your playstyle. I'd hew closer to brief and to the point.

Mechalich
2021-06-13, 12:04 AM
I presume you're just trying to provide examples of weaknesses, which is okay. However, this section leaves the unintentional impression that you're going to be using your knowledge of the character sheets to go for the weakest aspect of each character in each encounter. When playing I'd come to regard that as BS in pretty short order because it obviates any character I build, since unless I optimise or consult a character-building guide to cover all my weaknesses, it makes no difference what character I bring or what skills I bring to the encounter; my weakest aspect will always be targeted. When I read this passage, as a player, I hear: "I, your DM, won't even bother pretending that the hobgoblins were waiting around for a bunch of random travellers. I'm going to be giving those hobgoblins a copy of your CS and lots of time for them to study it and work out the most optimal strategy to kill you, as well as a heads-up when you're coming round the bend."


I got this impression as well. In an RPG context enemies should only have knowledge of character weaknesses if they are either visually very obvious or if the enemies are or report to a recurring villain. In the later case the PCs should have knowledge of the weaknesses of their enemies and be able to exploit those in turn (which makes it important that recurring villains actually have such weaknesses, the GM should not use superior system mastery to out-optimize the party).

In addition I'd note that if the game has a build-related power floor then it is absolutely the GMs responsibility to insure that no character shows up with a build that falls below that floor in the same fashion that a GM should insure that no build shows up above a power ceiling. Preventing anti-optimization is just as important as preventing over-optimization. The phrasing of the open letter strongly suggests that you will allow players to build characters that are not capable of handling the challenges you intend to throw at them.

Composer99
2021-06-13, 07:20 AM
Both the list of key items and the open letter have more to say about how difficult the game is than about player agency. It also comes across as focusing more on character building (and how important doing that right is) than agency during play, which is more salient for the idea of player agency.

I concur with others that the paragraph about enemies exploiting weaknesses comes across especially badly, and frankly even appears to contradict the idea that the enemies aren't arranged to specifically fight the PCs.

I would consider trying to condense the character building and difficulty parts down to a paragraph each, and add more stuff about the decisions the PCs can be expected to make during gameplay.

Talakeal
2021-06-13, 08:59 AM
However did you notice your most level headed and trusted player summed it up as "Talakeal makes it too difficult". That was not a comment about agency. That was a comment about difficulty.

Now, why did they think you were talking about the difficulty? *Takes time to reread the Open Letter* Wait, is 99% of that letter about difficulty or is 100% of it about difficulty? The most I saw about agency was "I will not put in problems that require one specific solution." which is a negligible statement regarding agency (unless it is a railroad).


How about surprising them with examples of what they can do. Who decides the campaign themes and goals? Who decides who the party with oppose? Who decides what part of the world the party will travel to? Does the party need to stay on this continent? Can the party open a store? Can the party found an organization? Etc

This is primarily about the mechanical side of the game, yes, but the attitude behind it is the same.

Basically, the players expect that the plot will be on rails, and that everything which happens in the game is my responsibility.

When they tell a gaming story, its always "Talakeal killed / screwed over my character", never a neutral "my character died / failed" or even an IC "The dragon killed / defeated my PC", let alone an admission that their own decisions played any part in it.

The players don't want to / believe they have any effect on the outcome of things.

Recently, mechanical issues have been the forefront of this. If they die, it is never because they made a reckless decision or had bad dice rolls, its because I either chose to kill them or didn't balance the encounter. If their character's weakness comes up, its because I am tailoring encounters to exploit them, not because they chose to build their character with a glaring weakness. If a monster surprises them with an ability its either because I am "punishing them for not caring about the lore" if its published or "adding abilities on the fly to railroad them".

If their first attempt to get past an obstacle doesn't work, they assume its because I am trying to railroad them into a specific solution and shooting down anything else, and will give up.

Likewise, they expect me to tell them which of their strategies will work before they try any of them, or to keep notes for them to remember their own plans.

Basically, they assume that every twist of the story and roll of the dice is part of my master plan, and that every encounter and challenge is tailored especially to screw over their characters.

Now, this issue has problems on the narrative side as well.

They are convinced that there is "one true way" to go about every story, and get lost and frustrated if I don't prod them in the right direction, that I have every conclusion already written out and should stop playing games and just tell them what their characters need to do.

I can't count how many times they have been talking to an evil NPC, offered to help him, and then he gave them an evil task to do, and then the players did it without question and then got mad at me for making them do evil things. They assume that if an NPC say's something, it is the word of god. Likewise, if an NPC has personality quirks and is unpleasant to them in any way, they take it personally as the GM talking. For example, one time a decade ago I made the mistake about having the villain gloat in character, and to this day my players tell people that I will "kill their characters and then laugh in their face about it".

In short, I want them to recognize that I am not some all powerful puppet-master, and that their choices, both narrative and mechanical, as well as the dice have just as much impact over the world as I do.




You, your system, and your players continue to communicate that the campaign / system is too difficult for your group.

I hear you, I really do. I am just having trouble wrapping my head around it for three reasons:

1: The bitching is significantly WORSE if I run a different system or if someone else DMs. I still remember rants about D&D, how its unfair that monsters start fights at full HP / spell slots, how its unfair that monsters are always encountered in terrain that benefits them, how buffs are for PCs, etc. And any time someone else tries to GM, they tend to browbeat them into submission over every little thing until they give up the game. Trying to convince them to not give up at the first sign of adversity is annoying as a DM, it is absolutely maddening as one of the PCs.

2: They win all the time. (I think) I get that the idea is that they don't want to have work for their victories and that my game simply requires too much thought / effort, but its still really hard for me to square the fact that they have win records approaching 100% and they still consider the game too hard. This is especially true when I read other people's campaign logs or APs (especially OSR meat grinders) where character death is frequent and the shadow of a TPK is always hanging over the group's heads.

3: I legitimately don't know how to make the game easier, especially in a way that is still interesting for me, without turning the world into an infomercial style farce where everyone is totally inept except for the PCs and / or an unsustainable Monte Hall campaign where PC power increases at an exponential rate.


I wonder, what if characters in Heart of Darkness could self heal Vitality x 4 damage per mission. Just say each point healed takes 5 minutes to avoid it impacting combat. You still have attrition, but now it is attrition of a source of healing rather than attrition of combat health. That could help the impression of difficulty.

Tonal / narrative reasons aside, I feel that this would make the game too long. It takes a long time to burn down the party's resources as is using fights that are individually trivial, so a solution like this that increases longevity over the session but not individual fights is going to draw out the sessions beyond what most people are comfortable running.

I suppose it could work if there was an understanding that the players were supposed to play recklessly as a result and the game was built with that in mind, but that really isn't a path I want to head down.


I concur with others that the paragraph about enemies exploiting weaknesses comes across especially badly, and frankly even appears to contradict the idea that the enemies aren't arranged to specifically fight the PCs.

I am talking about tactics, not meta-gaming or building encounters.

So, the difference is:

PC is immune to fire.

Once an NPC realizes this, he is not going to continue hitting the PC with fire attacks.

What I am NOT going to do is say "Immune to fire huh? Well, time to rip all the fire using enemies out of the monster manual. Prepare to fight nothing but frost monsters! Ice Ice Baby!"

Any idea how I could rephrase the line to get this across?


In addition I'd note that if the game has a build-related power floor then it is absolutely the GMs responsibility to insure that no character shows up with a build that falls below that floor in the same fashion that a GM should insure that no build shows up above a power ceiling. Preventing anti-optimization is just as important as preventing over-optimization. The phrasing of the open letter strongly suggests that you will allow players to build characters that are not capable of handling the challenges you intend to throw at them.

A couple of things here:

First, the idea that character builds are my responsibility is exactly the sort of thing I am trying to discourage. Why is it my responsibility to ensure that players build appropriate characters? This kind of puts my into a no win situation, as players resist controlling meddling DMs, but also expect me to fix their builds for them.

Second, this isn't D&D, and character balance is a lot better. You actually have to go out of your way to make an under or overpowered character, and nobody has ever really done that. And I mean go out of their way, like a blind lookout, a paraplegic runner, a one armed greatsword wielder, etc. for underpowered, or something like a disembodied consciousness minionmancer who puts all of their points into mental stats and magic for OP. I might need to step in if someone tries to intentionally break the game with something like that, but nobody ever has.

Third, and this continues from above, for normal character options it isn't about good and bad, its about trade-offs. If you make someone who is immune to poison, they will be significantly stronger in fights against poisonous enemies and slightly weaker elsewhere, a character who specializes in ranged / melee combat will be slightly stronger in most combats but will suffer when fighting more mobile enemies who deny them the ability to fight at their preferred range, a guy with good fortitude saves but bad will saves will excel against ghouls but suffer vs. banshees, etc.

In summary: Good and bad characters are purely situational. The only exception to this is characters who fail to synergyze with the rest of the party; for example a defender and a striker who can perform hammer and anvil tactics will tend to work better than two defenders or two strikers, two characters with different craft skills will be more valuable than redundant crafts, and a generalist character will be good in a very small or very large party, but won't contribute much in a medium sized party lacking in some of the specialist roles.

Note that these issues are exactly the sort of thing I am trying to communicate to my players, so let me know how I can adjust my wording to better get this across.


I presume you're just trying to provide examples of weaknesses, which is okay. However, this section leaves the unintentional impression that you're going to be using your knowledge of the character sheets to go for the weakest aspect of each character in each encounter. When playing I'd come to regard that as BS in pretty short order because it obviates any character I build, since unless I optimise or consult a character-building guide to cover all my weaknesses, it makes no difference what character I bring or what skills I bring to the encounter; my weakest aspect will always be targeted. When I read this passage, as a player, I hear: "I, your DM, won't even bother pretending that the hobgoblins were waiting around for a bunch of random travelers. I'm going to be giving those hobgoblins a copy of your CS and lots of time for them to study it and work out the most optimal strategy to kill you, as well as a heads-up when you're coming round the bend."

Which is the exact opposite of what I am trying to convey, but what my players are already convinced I am doing.

I am trying to tell them that decisions they make during character creation matter, and that both their strengths and their weaknesses will come up at some point during the game.

For example, in my last game the mage chose to tank their strength and never buy any protective items to maximize their offensive casting abilities. Which is fine. But anytime an enemy made the in character tactical decision to attack the frail unarmored target, or to grapple the scrawny little girl who was half the size of the rest of her party (and blowing his comrades to bits with giant fireballs!) it was because I was picking on him and tailoring encounters specifically to screw him over, rather than a natural consequence of forsaking physical attributes and defensive magics in exchange for more offensive firepower.

Also, its funny you used hobgoblins as your example, because the mage in question absolutely hated them! Big bruisers who used military tactics and were smart enough to spread out and target the clothies first when facing a mage guaranteed a meltdown every time they showed up!


Again, I think there's unintentional impressions left here. I'm presuming the desire is to be upfront with the players, but on first reading that second paragraph has a pretty strong whiff of patronising.

Its hard not to sound patronizing. In this case, my group is made up of two types of people, new players and players who have meltdowns when something doesn't go their way in the game, and I am trying to get across my expectations and what sort of behavior is and isn't acceptable at the table.

I have always had a problem threading the needle between being cryptic and not saying enough and being condescending saying too much, and any help there would be appreciates.


And the first paragraph has a pretty strong smell of advertising that you're going to be merciless with players. It also leaves the impression that you're not going to be amenable to reason or argument from the players in a grey area ... and there are always grey areas in a RPG.

I am trying to say I am not going to fudge dice or pull deus ex machinas. I absolutely do not want PCs to die or the party to fail, but I am going to play the game fair.

This has nothing to do with rulings.

That being said, maybe I should talk about rulings at some point; it is amazing how bitter some players get when a DM doesn't rule their way. I have one player who still periodically gripes about the time over 20 years ago when I ruled that his paladin's disease immunity did not protect him from a gas spore (it is listed as a poison, but is removed by cure disease), and I was shocked by the sheer amount of vitriol some posters were throwing at the DM for making a ruling over a gray area in the thread on teleportation and dominate in the 5E board last week.



Maybe in its place put up what you told us in your notes: "The world I'm giving you is dangerous and it's one where most NPCs are competent combatants." See how that gives the impression that it's the world that's a serial killer and not you?

More generally on 'friendlying' up a document: use contractions. "You're" is more relatable than "you are."

Also, consider making your expressions less passive: instead of "The most effective form of power gaming is synergizing your abilities with those of your comrades and working together as a team," try "D&D is a team game. A party of four characters who support each other and cover each other's weak spots will make out a lot better than four individuals working independently."

Thanks! Good advice, I will work on it!


Reworked this bit with strikethroughs. You're trying to tell these guys that their main "helpline" is to take a loan or buy some potions, which will cut their gold pieces. You don't need to get into the rest of it, especially where you mention balancing mistakes on your part. That leaves the impression that the players bear the cost of your mistakes as DM, which, unless you want a player revolt, you should never tell them outright. Besides ... DMs don't make mistakes. :D

As I said to Old Tree's above, the core of the issue with my games and the reason that I am writing this letter is that the players assume I am in absolute control of everything; and if they fail it is either because I am totally malicious or incompetent. So I am trying to get across that sometimes its just poor luck with the dice or bad plans on their part that cause failure, and is usually a combination of both. At the same time, I am trying not to sound so arrogant as to say that I never make mistakes or contribute to a failure.

Kesnit
2021-06-13, 09:09 AM
1: I run a fair table, I do not fudge dice.
2: I do not put them in railroads of situations with only one correct solution.
3: Their character is theirs to control, but their actions have consequences.
4: I am trying to run a plausible world that is dangerous and where most NPCs are competent.
5: They can build their character however they like, but this has repercussions, both their strengths and their weaknesses will matter.
6: Teamwork and party synergy is the strongest form of power-gaming.
7: I am going to use a variety of enemies that are not tailored to defeat any one PC or the group as a whole.
8: NPCs will be of appropriate challenges, and are going to be played with tactics according to their intelligence.


This is really good. Why not stop here?


Overly specializing means you excel in one area, but may be useless and bored when that area isn’t relevant.

I understand where you are coming from, but this is a problem for the DM, not the player. If a player comes to you with a proposed PC that is too specialized for your game, tell them. Don't just let them in the game and then make them sit, waiting for the one situation where they will be useful. Or you can make sure the useful-situation comes up often enough that the player feels they are contributing.


Likewise, a character who foregoes defense for offense may find themselves incapacitated too often to make use of their strengths, while one who foregoes offense for more defense might simply be ignored in favor of softer targets and contributing little.

"Don't focus on defense because enemies will ignore you. But also don't focus on offense because you will just die a lot." So what is a player supposed to do?


Likewise, I tend to play enemies smart, and they will tend to use whatever methods are at their disposal to target your weaknesses. If you have a low strength, expect to be tripped or grappled; if you have no ranged weapon, expect to be kited; if you have no armor, expect to take a lot of damage, if you have low fortitude expect poison to be a problem, and if you have low resolve expect to fall prey to mind control or magic when it shows up.

As others have said, this says the enemies will specifically know and target every PCs weakness. It's called metagaming, and is bad, especially if the DM is the one doing it.


I will be using a wide array of enemy types and locations; this means that there shouldn’t be one offense or defense that will be the key too everything. Some characters will be better in some sessions than others, but it will all more or less balance out in the end.

OK, if it really does balance out. This is also where you need to look at the proposed sheets before the game starts and either tell the player if their build will work, or tweak your world to ensure the build will work.

You also don't want players sitting around bored through all of combat because they are useless. Make sure there is something each PC can do in any encounter, even if it isn't directly combat. (i.e. untying hostages, disarming traps)


The most effective form of power gaming is synergizing your abilities with those of your comrades and working together as a team.

Make sure you have a Session 0 so everyone knows what the others are playing. And be involved in Session 0 yourself to make sure anything you know will be necessary is covered.


This game is going to be fair, but ruthless.

This comes across as a contradiction. What you mean as "fair" may not be the same meaning your players give. I once had a player tell me "the PCs are supposed to win," which is not an unreasonable statement. If you approach the game from the idea of "every combat could lead to a TPK" and your players are looking at it as "we're heroes and will save the day," you have a problem.


There are no house rules in place to protect your characters, and if you make a mistake or bite off more than you can chew, I will not step in to save you.

Not unreasonable. But you have to make sure that the players KNOW when they are going to bite off more than they can chew. If you don't want them running off to the Mountain of Certain Death at LVL 2, either don't tell them about the Mountain until much later, or make it every clear that the Mountain of Certain Death means "certain death." That isn't as simple as an NPC farmer saying "no one who has gone there has ever come back." That is just a challenge to the PCs, because they are "heroes." Have a powerful party come back and tell them how bad it is. Have a PC with Knowledge (Local) make a check to know stories about how deadly it is.


I know it’s frustrating to lose, and if something bad happens to your character I know most people’s first instinct is to find something or someone to blame and then lash out at it, but understand that when you do that you are going to put everyone else on edge, which will make the next instance that much more severe.

Yes, losing sucks. Especially if the players are playing under the assumption they are heroes and "good wins the day." Bad dice rolls happen. Poor planning happens. But if "bad dice" means they have to roll 15 or better to hit, or the enemies ALWAYS make their saves, that isn't bad dice. That's bad DM-ing. If the poor planning is because you neglected to tell them something vital or their one attempt to make a check to learn it failed (and they were never given another attempt), that isn't poor planning. That is poor DM-ing.


I will not put in problems that require one specific solution. If your first idea doesn’t work, please don’t become frustrated. Instead, try a different approach; do not assume you are in a no win situation or a puzzle which requires a very specific answer.

Player agency is great, but you have to be willing to say "yes." Even if the idea is not one you thought of, if a player thinks of it and it is a reasonable solution, say "yes." Going in with the idea that "the PCs can do X, Y, or Z to solve this" (which is, of course, more than 1 solution) and a player thinks of A, don't rule out A out of hand.


Most missions will be calibrated against the standard party following the difficulty guidelines in the book.

So are you going to require the party to fill the set roles, or allow them to build what they want? What if no one wants to be a divine caster? What if no one wants to be a skill-monkey?


The average mission will deplete most of your resources; i.e. vitality, mana, destiny, and charged artifacts or abilities. What you have left over can be used to help accomplish optional objectives or saved for activities during the recovery phase such as crafting or gambling.

You are encouraging your players to hoard resources because they do not know what is coming next or when they will be able to refill. You may know that Encounter X is the best place to use the Spell of Greatness, but the player does not.


If you struggle, which you sometimes will, and it can be the result of poor tactics, bad dice rolls, character builds which are weak against the particulars of the mission, or balancing mistakes on my part, you can usually pull through by taking on debts; usually in the form of potions or mercenaries, which will reduce your wealth.

Which will likely never happen because the players have no idea how they will recover the wealth they lost. If it is as simple as "OK, let's come back with these specific things," that's one thing. But if they don't know the solution that you know of, there is a real risk of them trying something that doesn't work (and getting discouraged), or walking away until they can solve the problem on their own.


If you feel you cannot possibly complete the mission without risking your characters life, it is permissible to turn back; but doing so should only be a last resort as you will fall drastically behind the wealth curve and may alienate your patrons or otherwise let opportunities slip away.

"I will only run the world the way I want to. You have no choice but to follow what I tell you. If you don't do what I say, I won't let you do anything else."

And you say you want player agency..?


The ideal Heart of Darkness character is brave, yet cunning.

"You can only build the kind of character I think you should have. No other archetype allowed."


The objective of the game is to use your resources wisely,

"Except I won't give you any clue as to the best way to use them."


making the maximum impact for as little expenditure as possible,

"Which you won't know and I won't give you any kind of help."


so that your resources will carry you as far as you can,

"And I also won't let you know when or how you can restock, so you either have to hoard or listen to me laugh at you because you used what you had too quickly and now have nothing."


completing the mission, all optional objectives, and having some left over for the recovery phase.

"Which of course, since you don't know what all is involved, you have no idea how to property ration."


But, when upon reading the draft, my most level headed and trusted player summed it up as "I am hardcore, and I play to win! You will all die, and when you do don't come crying to me like a bitch!" which is not exactly what I was going for.

But it is what you said.


And suggestions for how I can better convey what I am trying to say?

Quit acting like god and talk to your players. Work with your players in creating the world. Build your world around what the players want to do. Know that your players are playing for fun and being beaten with a stick all the time is not what most people consider fun. Be willing to say "yes."

EDIT: You replied while I was replying...


Basically, the players expect that the plot will be on rails, and that everything which happens in the game is my responsibility.

And they are about 90% correct. You are the DM, which means just about everything that happens is because you put it there. Yes, bad rolls and poor planning can happen. But how much of that is because of truly bad rolls or poor planning and how much is because you didn't take into account the abilities of the PCs? You put the encounter there.


When they tell a gaming story, its always "Talakeal killed / screwed over my character", never a neutral "my character died / failed" or even an IC "The dragon killed / defeated my PC", let alone an admission that their own decisions played any part in it.

The encounter didn't build itself.


The players don't want to / believe they have any effect on the outcome of things.

Based on that letter, it's because you told them they don't. The world is yours alone, and if they don't fit perfectly, that's not your fault.

Except it is your fault. Because you are the DM. The world does not exist until you make it. The players can affect it, at which point you can adjust the world based on what they did.


Recently, mechanical issues have been the forefront of this. If they die, it is never because they made a reckless decision or had bad dice rolls, its because I either chose to kill them or didn't balance the encounter.

Are they right about balance? Was it purely bad rolls, or was it because you did not give them the guidance necessary to succeed.

Your players do not live in the world. There are things you know (because you built it) and the PCs would know (because they live there) that the players do not. It is your role to ensure the players know what you and their PCs know.


If their character's weakness comes up, its because I am tailoring encounters to exploit them,

You said in the letter that that is exactly what you do.


not because they chose to build their character with a glaring weakness.

No PC is so perfect as to be able to do everything with no weaknesses. I'm going to repeat something I said above because it is relevant here: "Don't focus on defense because enemies will ignore you. But also don't focus on offense because you will just die a lot."


If a monster surprises them with an ability its either because I am "punishing them for not caring about the lore" if its published or "adding abilities on the fly to railroad them".

Are they right? Did you add an ability? Was there ever an opportunity for a PC to make a check to know "elder whomps can breath fire AND cold." Or if this is in the lore, did you tell the players because this is something that the PCs would know?


If their first attempt to get past an obstacle doesn't work, they assume its because I am trying to railroad them into a specific solution and shooting down anything else, and will give up.

Given the way you approach the use of resources, this isn't surprising. You seem to demand that they use limited resources without any indication of if or when they will be able to restock. It doesn't sound like you give them any aid in knowing things they should know IC. And you do railroad...


If you feel you cannot possibly complete the mission without risking your characters life, it is permissible to turn back; but doing so should only be a last resort as you will fall drastically behind the wealth curve and may alienate your patrons or otherwise let opportunities slip away.


Likewise, they expect me to tell them which of their strategies will work before they try any of them,

Because you demand they burn limited resources in order to solve problems, knowing that those resources - if lost - were lost for no gain.

This is another situation where allowing rolls would be useful. Tactics, Lore, whatever is relevant for the situation. You want them to use agency - give them the opportunity to know they have this agency. Again, just because the players don't know something does not mean the PCs don't.

Which brings up another idea. Your players are not Sun Tzu or von Clausewitz, so don't treat them like that have to be. Allow rolls of an appropriate skill for a PC to think of something that the player cannot.


Basically, they assume that every twist of the story and roll of the dice is part of my master plan, and that every encounter and challenge is tailored especially to screw over their characters.

Which is exactly what you told them in the letter.

You don't care what kind of characters they want to play. If the party doesn't have XYZ, some certain encounter cannot be overcome.

If the party feels the current mission is too much, there is no option to back off, do something else, and come back later.


They are convinced that there is "one true way" to go about every story, and get lost and frustrated if I don't prod them in the right direction,

Remember, you told them...

If you feel you cannot possibly complete the mission without risking your characters life, it is permissible to turn back; but doing so should only be a last resort as you will fall drastically behind the wealth curve and may alienate your patrons or otherwise let opportunities slip away.

In other words, the only way to advance the plot is to follow on the tracks you laid down, because you won't open up another path.


that I have every conclusion already written out and should stop playing games and just tell them what their characters need to do.

Yes, that is exactly what you have told them.


I can't count how many times they have been talking to an evil NPC, offered to help him, and then he gave them an evil task to do, and then the players did it without question and then got mad at me for making them do evil things.

1)
If you feel you cannot possibly complete the mission without risking your characters life, it is permissible to turn back; but doing so should only be a last resort as you will fall drastically behind the wealth curve and may alienate your patrons or otherwise let opportunities slip away.

If the only way to advance is to follow the quest you give them, of course they are going to follow every quest you give them. Backing off is not an option.

2) Did you ever give them a roll to know "hey, we can report this to Lord Inquisitor Whozit?" The PC would know about the "Lord Inquisitor," even if the players did not.


They assume that if an NPC say's something, it is the word of god. Likewise, if an NPC has personality quirks and is unpleasant to them in any way, they take it personally as the GM talking. For example, one time a decade ago I made the mistake about having the villain gloat in character, and to this day my players tell people that I will "kill their characters and then laugh in their face about it".

That is the world you set up.


In short, I want them to recognize that I am not some all powerful puppet-master, and that their choices, both narrative and mechanical, as well as the dice have just as much impact over the world as I do.

Except they don't. You built the world without input from the players. The world is the world as you want it. Quests are on your railroad because no other option is available. You won't provide information that the PCs would know.

There is a thing in psychology called "learned helplessness," and that seems to be where your players are. You have kept everything so tightly under your control that they no longer even try to do anything.


1: The bitching is significantly WORSE if I run a different system or if someone else DMs. I still remember rants about D&D, how its unfair that monsters start fights at full HP / spell slots, how its unfair that monsters are always encountered in terrain that benefits them, how buffs are for PCs, etc. And any time someone else tries to GM, they tend to browbeat them into submission over every little thing until they give up the game. Trying to convince them to not give up at the first sign of adversity is annoying as a DM, it is absolutely maddening as one of the PCs.

"Monsters are always encountered in terrain that benefits them."
That sounds awfully like "I will target any weakness you have because enemies always know what your weaknesses are."

In other words, don't set up every encounter to disadvantage the players, then get annoyed when they call you on your metagaming.


They win all the time. (I think) I get that the idea is that they don't want to have work for their victories

No, they are not allowed to work for their victories. You railroad them, metagame against them, and then wonder why they don't even try. You have told them that they do not matter when it comes to world building. You have told them that they have to follow your path or no other path will open. You have told them you will cheat (metagame) to ensure they lose. It seems you withhold information that they should have.

Besides, why should everything be a life-or-death struggle? Why can't they get easy victories every once in a while?


and that my game simply requires too much thought / effort, but its still really hard for me to square the fact that they have win records approaching 100% and they still consider the game too hard.

Winning isn't everything. Some people want to play for the social aspect and not the tactics. Some people are OK with having to think sometimes, but don't want to spend hours a night trying to imitate Sun Tzu in order to accomplish anything. Some people just aren't tactical thinkers and find it frustrating.


This is especially true when I read other people's campaign logs or APs (especially OSR meat grinders) where character death is frequent and the shadow of a TPK is always hanging over the group's heads.

Why do you feel the need to beat your players with sticks all the time?


3: I legitimately don't know how to make the game easier,

Quit acting like god and talk to your players. Work with your players in creating the world. Build your world around what the players want to do. Know that your players are playing for fun and being beaten with a stick all the time is not what most people consider fun. Be willing to say "yes."

I know building encounters where you are going to lose (because you are the DM) can be tiresome. But the PCs are supposed to win. Maybe sometimes it takes more effort than others, but they are supposed to be the heroes (or anti-heroes) of the campaign. In the end, the world is supposed to be saved. (There are games where this is not always the case - Call of Cthulhu for example - but that is not the case here.)


especially in a way that is still interesting for me, without turning the world into an infomercial style farce where everyone is totally inept except for the PCs and / or an unsustainable Monte Hall campaign where PC power increases at an exponential rate.

You know it isn't either/or, right? There can be encounters where the PCs win easily and others where it take work and tactics. You do not have to beat them with sticks all the time.


Tonal / narrative reasons aside, I feel that this would make the game too long. It takes a long time to burn down the party's resources as is using fights that are individually trivial, so a solution like this that increases longevity over the session but not individual fights is going to draw out the sessions beyond what most people are comfortable running.

So set it up for multiple encounters per session. Or allow encounters to stretch over multiple game sessions.


I suppose it could work if there was an understanding that the players were supposed to play recklessly

Recklessly? How about "I suppose it could work if there was an understanding that the players are allowed to find the information they need and I don't feel the need to beat them with sticks."


I am talking about tactics, not meta-gaming or building encounters.

You admit you metagame, but don't want to talk about metagaming. In fact, you metagame in order to make things harder for your players by building encounters that are specifically designed to take advantage of their weaknesses. You force your players to play a tactical game without asking them if that is what they want.


So, the difference is:

PC is immune to fire.

Once an NPC realizes this, he is not going to continue hitting the PC with fire attacks.

What I am NOT going to do is say "Immune to fire huh? Well, time to rip all the fire using enemies out of the monster manual. Prepare to fight nothing but frost monsters! Ice Ice Baby!"

Any idea how I could rephrase the line to get this across?

Talk to your players out of game. Tell them this. Make sure the fire immune PC knows that there will be encounters where their fire immunity will be useful. And then make sure there are encounters where fire immunity is useful - and not just once a year on the player's birthday. The player spent resources on this and should know they were well-spent.


First, the idea that character builds are my responsibility is exactly the sort of thing I am trying to discourage. Why is it my responsibility to ensure that players build appropriate characters?

Because you are the DM and control the world. That players do not know what is and isn't useful in the world; you do.

Let me give you an example. Let's say you are running a Dark Sun setting. Player comes to you (not knowing the setting) and says they have always wanted to play a Wizard. Do you let them play a Wizard, knowing it's one of the worst classes to play in Dark Sun, or do you tell them that arcane casters are really bad and to do something else?


This kind of puts my into a no win situation, as players resist controlling meddling DMs, but also expect me to fix their builds for them.

I cannot imagine any player pushing back against a DM who says "no, a necromancer cleric of the God of Death would not work in this campaign because XYZ." Wouldn't it be better to tell them up-front rather than have them bring in that necromancer cleric, only to find that necromancy is punished by painful death?


Second, this isn't D&D, and character balance is a lot better. You actually have to go out of your way to make an under or overpowered character,

Fine, but there are still things that just don't work in your world that on the surface could seem like good ideas. Like
disembodied consciousness minionmancer who puts all of their points into mental stats and magic for OP.

Which just sounds awesome as a character concept. Why don't that work? (rhetorical question.) Why not tell the player before they put their effort into building it?


Third, and this continues from above, for normal character options it isn't about good and bad, its about trade-offs. If you make someone who is immune to poison, they will be significantly stronger in fights against poisonous enemies and slightly weaker elsewhere, a character who specializes in ranged / melee combat will be slightly stronger in most combats but will suffer when fighting more mobile enemies who deny them the ability to fight at their preferred range, a guy with good fortitude saves but bad will saves will excel against ghouls but suffer vs. banshees, etc.

Yes, that was the point the person was making. But based on what you have said, you would then send the weak-against-creature against the poison immune, keep all enemies outside the preferred range, and a bunch of banshees. Because the player built a character with a weakness and to punish them, that weakness will be exploited.


In summary: Good and bad characters are purely situational.

Which is not what you have said. Your letter says weaknesses will be exploited but strengths will never come into play. ("Don't focus on defense because enemies will ignore you. But also don't focus on offense because you will just die a lot.")


The only exception to this is characters who fail to synergyze with the rest of the party; for example a defender and a striker who can perform hammer and anvil tactics will tend to work better than two defenders or two strikers, two characters with different craft skills will be more valuable than redundant crafts, and a generalist character will be good in a very small or very large party, but won't contribute much in a medium sized party lacking in some of the specialist roles.

So who cares what players want to play. They have to play certain archetypes or the game just won't work.

It's the job of the DM to incorporate the PCs into the game world. It's the job of the DM to take the abilities of the PCs into account when building encounters. Sounds like you refuse to do either.


Which is the exact opposite of what I am trying to convey, but what my players are already convinced already know I am doing.

Fixed it for you.


I am trying to tell them that decisions they make during character creation matter,

Because it tells you what weaknesses you can exploit.


and that both their strengths and their weaknesses will come up at some point during the game.

No, you told them their strengths will be ignored and their weaknesses exploited.

To use the example of the defender and striker you mentioned above...
Based on what you said in the letter, the striker will always be attacked and the defender never will. Because attacking the striker will kill them, but attacking the defender will do nothing. Unless the defenders is extremely mobile (which is not often a trait of defenders), the defender will be left out of the combat - maybe occasionally getting hits in (although not a lot and not for a lot of damage because they put their points into defense and not attack).


For example, in my last game the mage chose to tank their strength and never buy any protective items to maximize their offensive casting abilities. Which is fine. But anytime an enemy made the in character tactical decision to attack the frail unarmored target, or to grapple the scrawny little girl who was half the size of the rest of her party (and blowing his comrades to bits with giant fireballs!) it was because I was picking on him and tailoring encounters specifically to screw him over, rather than a natural consequence of forsaking physical attributes and defensive magics in exchange for more offensive firepower.

I think you are missing the point. No PC can be perfect and have no weaknesses. You are punishing the players by specifically targeting things they cannot fix. A PC cannot do everything. If the player wanted an offense-focused mage, something had to give. The player made an intelligent decision and put their points where they make the most sense. Above, you commented that generalists are not going to be as effective as specialists - which is true. But now, specialists disdained because they cannot do everything.

Please make up your mind.


I am trying to say I am not going to fudge dice or pull deus ex machinas. I absolutely do not want PCs to die or the party to fail, but I am going to play the game fair.

No, you aren't. You are going to metagame and ignore the players to do what you want. No help with character building, but blame them if their build doesn't work in-game. Only allow a certain amount of resources, but blame them if they cannot read your mind to know when and how to use them. Only allow certain quests and punish the players if they cannot completely them in the order you anticipated. Use OOC knowledge to target the PCs. (How would monsters know at the start of a fight that the "clothie" is a mage and not a high-dex striker who can escape grapples by contortion?)

No one is saying to fudge dice. We are saying that blaming the players for the way you have taught them to play is unfair to the players.


As I said to Old Tree's above, the core of the issue with my games and the reason that I am writing this letter is that the players assume I am in absolute control of everything;

And they are mostly correct.

KineticDiplomat
2021-06-13, 09:23 AM
Based on the extended Talakeal stories, may I say I strongly doubt this is going to change anything. You and your players are at this point in an abusive relationship, battering the crap out of each other and taking it back just to try to prove who is “right” in today’s fight without either of you realizing bailing out was the right answer a long time ago.

Because your letter doesn’t actually say what’s written in this context, what it says is “I’m gonna rock your **** and it’s gonna be your fault, ha!” and that seems like a bad place to start from.

Talakeal
2021-06-13, 09:36 AM
Stuff

I was going to respond to your specific points, as you raise some valid concerns and ask a few straightforward questions early on, but as the post goes on it gets increasingly hostile and unreasonable, and I don't feel like anything good will come out of it.

I will say that, much like my players, you are asking for a bunch of contradictory stuff, and putting the DM in a binary situation of either "total control over every aspect of the game or a passive observer who is there to cater to the PCs every whim while having no fun of their own."

Likewise, you are falling into the classic trap of simultaneously calling me arrogant for giving the PCs too much advice and calling my cryptic and demanding the players "read my mind" for not giving enough advice. And demanding I be fair and impartial, while at the same time tailoring every encounter to the party.


Because your letter doesn’t actually say what’s written in this context, what it says is “I’m gonna rock your **** and it’s gonna be your fault, ha!” and that seems like a bad place to start from.

Which is why I am asking for feedback.

My intended, super blunt TLDR is: Recognize that your decisions impact the game, and that dice rolls provide uncertainty, so stop losing your mind and blaming me / the other players every time anything doesn't go your way; as long as you can work together as a team everything will come out ok.


OOC I am expecting this game to go like my previous games, which means it will last~2 years, and during that time there will be only 1 or 2 character deaths, one or two failed missions, zero TPKs, and the players will be about 20% ahead of the curve when it comes to wealth / reputation / success rate.

Composer99
2021-06-13, 09:37 AM
I concur with others that the paragraph about enemies exploiting weaknesses comes across especially badly, and frankly even appears to contradict the idea that the enemies aren't arranged to specifically fight the PCs.




I am talking about tactics, not meta-gaming or building encounters.

So, the difference is:

PC is immune to fire.

Once an NPC realizes this, he is not going to continue hitting the PC with fire attacks.

What I am NOT going to do is say "Immune to fire huh? Well, time to rip all the fire using enemies out of the monster manual. Prepare to fight nothing but frost monsters! Ice Ice Baby!"

Any idea how I could rephrase the line to get this across?


I would go with something more like this:

Enemies are not tailored specifically to fight the party, play around their strengths, or exploit their weaknesses, except possibly in very specific and rare situations. However, they will adjust their tactics based on whatever they can discern about the PCs. For instance, once an enemy realises a PC is immune to fire, they will stop using fire-based attacks, and an enemy looking for a soft target will pick an unarmoured PC over an armoured one.

That might not appease your players, but I would find that perfectly reasonable, myself, both as a DM and a player.

The Glyphstone
2021-06-13, 09:42 AM
OOC I am expecting this game to go like my previous games, which means it will last~2 years, and during that time there will be only 1 or 2 character deaths, one or two failed missions, zero TPKs, and the players will be about 20% ahead of the curve when it comes to wealth / reputation / success rate.

And like all those previous games, they will hate you, rage furiously at the slightest inconvenience whether perceived or actual, you will make no changes, and yet again come to us confused as to why this keeps happening. I think KineticDiplomat bluntly put it best here...after this much time, this has ceased to become Bizarro World Gaming and now just looks like a co-dependent emotionally abusive pit of quicksand. As much as I know you won't do it, the only sane solution is to light the bridge on fire and walk away, start from complete scratch without a single existing member of your current group or anyone who's ever even been in contact with your existing group members. For the sake of your own health if nothing else.

Sparky McDibben
2021-06-13, 10:22 AM
Dude, just take a break and get a different group. Try running 5e D&D with other friends for a while. Or, alternatively, let somebody else DM. I feel like you are putting yourself in a box here that you do not need to be in.

Talakeal
2021-06-13, 10:40 AM
And like all those previous games, they will hate you, rage furiously at the slightest inconvenience whether perceived or actual, you will make no changes, and yet again come to us confused as to why this keeps happening. I think KineticDiplomat bluntly put it best here...after this much time, this has ceased to become Bizarro World Gaming and now just looks like a co-dependent emotionally abusive pit of quicksand. As much as I know you won't do it, the only sane solution is to light the bridge on fire and walk away, start from complete scratch without a single existing member of your current group or anyone who's ever even been in contact with your existing group members. For the sake of your own health if nothing else.

You are, of course, absolutely right.

The thing is, Bob and Brian are both lifelong friends, and despite their emotional issues, Bob genuinely loves my crunch, and Brian genuinely loves my fluff, and as someone who is primarily in the hobby as a creative thing, that's really special and hard to find, so I put up with a lot.

I have tried three different online groups in the past couple of years, and online gaming is just boring as all heck for me, and every time once real life schedules make it hard to attend the sessions, I just let the game drop because I realized I wasn't having fun. I am actually in another online game right now, but it doesn't really fulfill any needs and I expect it to be dropped as soon as my work schedule conflicts.

If you recall, I did actually find a new group from 2014-2016, but it was significantly crazier and more abusive, so much so that I eventually did stand up for myself and leave after the GM threatened to beat me up.

Likewise, most new players I recruit are absolutely bonkers and make Bob and Brian look like saints. And the last two players I recruited were very pleasant and drama free for the first year, but near the end of the campaign basically started mirroring Bob's bad behaviors, either because he was coaching them or in response to something I did (probably a little of both).

So yeah, I really do love gaming and really do put up with a lot of abuse for it.

OldTrees1
2021-06-13, 11:49 AM
This is primarily about the mechanical side of the game, yes, but the attitude behind it is the same.

Stop right here. Talakeal I have none of the baggage your group has and I don't see this open letter as being about agency. If I saw this open letter then I would summarize it as the DM giving a heavy handed warning about the difficulty. I would not assume you were talking about agency. If I want to tell someone about the moon, I don't do so with a wall of text about oak trees. Shorter would be better. On point would be better.


Basically, the players expect that the plot will be on rails, and that everything which happens in the game is my responsibility.

When they tell a gaming story, its always "Talakeal killed / screwed over my character", never a neutral "my character died / failed" or even an IC "The dragon killed / defeated my PC", let alone an admission that their own decisions played any part in it.

The players don't want to / believe they have any effect on the outcome of things.

Recently, mechanical issues have been the forefront of this. If they die, it is never because they made a reckless decision or had bad dice rolls, its because I either chose to kill them or didn't balance the encounter. If their character's weakness comes up, its because I am tailoring encounters to exploit them, not because they chose to build their character with a glaring weakness. If a monster surprises them with an ability its either because I am "punishing them for not caring about the lore" if its published or "adding abilities on the fly to railroad them".

If their first attempt to get past an obstacle doesn't work, they assume its because I am trying to railroad them into a specific solution and shooting down anything else, and will give up.

Likewise, they expect me to tell them which of their strategies will work before they try any of them, or to keep notes for them to remember their own plans.

Basically, they assume that every twist of the story and roll of the dice is part of my master plan, and that every encounter and challenge is tailored especially to screw over their characters.

Now, this issue has problems on the narrative side as well.

They are convinced that there is "one true way" to go about every story, and get lost and frustrated if I don't prod them in the right direction, that I have every conclusion already written out and should stop playing games and just tell them what their characters need to do.

I can't count how many times they have been talking to an evil NPC, offered to help him, and then he gave them an evil task to do, and then the players did it without question and then got mad at me for making them do evil things. They assume that if an NPC say's something, it is the word of god. Likewise, if an NPC has personality quirks and is unpleasant to them in any way, they take it personally as the GM talking. For example, one time a decade ago I made the mistake about having the villain gloat in character, and to this day my players tell people that I will "kill their characters and then laugh in their face about it".

In short, I want them to recognize that I am not some all powerful puppet-master, and that their choices, both narrative and mechanical, as well as the dice have just as much impact over the world as I do.

They expect they are being railroaded mechanically and narratively. Can you prove they are not?
1) The player comes up with an idea they don't expect is the "intended" solution. Did it work?
The more often a player's "unintended" solution works, the less likely they are to assume there is an "intended" solution. The more often the player's "unintended" solution fails, the more likely they are to assume there is an "intended" solution.

However you don't want unreasonable ideas to work. For agency you want the player choices to matter. That means a player has the ability to choose ideas that don't work and ideas that do work.

Furthermore the players seem ill equipped to come up with creative viable solutions (doubly so for puzzle enemies). There are ways to better equip the players.

One example is the rule of 3. For everything I want the players to know, I could give them roughly 3 independent sufficient hints to that knowledge. (In a sandbox I increase the number of hints, or accept the increased chance the PCs won't know the knowledge). For your group you might use a rule of 5.

Another example is helping the player know what the character knows about their plans. You mentioned the players are trying to ask you if their plan will work. That means they have insufficient information to guess themselves. However their characters might not have insufficient information. Or if the characters do have insufficient information, why do they not know and what could they investigate? Informing the players can help them.

2) You do control the difficulty, you are very secretive, and your language about difficulty sounds like you will rubberband the difficulty. That gives the impression that you are using tailored difficulty. If the PCs lose against tailored difficulty, it usually is the GM making an error in estimating the difficulty. Even if the PCs lose due to bad tactics, that is the GM making an error in estimating the tailored difficulty.

If you have been using tailored difficulty, then for this group (not for the lurker reading this), I suggest 2 things

A) Be very transparent. Be too transparent. Be even more transparent than that. Someone suggested handing the Players copies of the monster's stats. That might be a brilliant idea for your group. Also tell them how easy/hard you think the fight will be.

B) Maybe use a static quo difficulty that caps at the party's level. It really sounds like having easier fights exist would be helpful. To use D&D as an analogy if the party can fight ogres, let them encounter easy fights against orcs.

3) They mistake NPCs as the "voice of god"? What if the "voice of god" shows up and says the NPC is not the "voice of god"?
A creepy old man in a tavern gives the party a quest -> The "voice of god" reminds the players that the creepy old man is not the GM. The players don't need to take the quest if they don't want to. If the party learns that neither Gandalf nor Saruman are the voice of the GM, then they might understand their agency more.

4) Have you considered a campaign where there is no wrong direction to go and yet the players still have agency? You had a resting problem when you did the hex crawl, that would resurface. However overabundance of player agency can help the players recognize they have player agency.




I hear you, I really do. I am just having trouble wrapping my head around it for three reasons:

1: The bitching is significantly WORSE if I run a different system or if someone else DMs. I still remember rants about D&D, how its unfair that monsters start fights at full HP / spell slots, how its unfair that monsters are always encountered in terrain that benefits them, how buffs are for PCs, etc. And any time someone else tries to GM, they tend to browbeat them into submission over every little thing until they give up the game. Trying to convince them to not give up at the first sign of adversity is annoying as a DM, it is absolutely maddening as one of the PCs.

2: They win all the time. (I think) I get that the idea is that they don't want to have work for their victories and that my game simply requires too much thought / effort, but its still really hard for me to square the fact that they have win records approaching 100% and they still consider the game too hard. This is especially true when I read other people's campaign logs or APs (especially OSR meat grinders) where character death is frequent and the shadow of a TPK is always hanging over the group's heads.

3: I legitimately don't know how to make the game easier, especially in a way that is still interesting for me, without turning the world into an infomercial style farce where everyone is totally inept except for the PCs and / or an unsustainable Monte Hall campaign where PC power increases at an exponential rate.

2) Yes they will "all the time" but they feel it is still too difficult.
In RPGs the PCs will have a near 100% fight win rate. The worse the consequence of a loss, the higher the win rate. The closer a loss is to ending the campaign (character dying without coming back, TPK, etc) then the higher the win rate. If the GM uses failing forward (http://dmsworkshop.com/2019/05/03/dm-101-failing-forward/) then the win rate probably decreases.

In my last campaign PC death was permanent for the majority of the campaign. So the win rate is higher.
There were plenty of narrative loses the PCs could face independent of the fights. So the fight win rate is higher and the narrative win rate is lower.

The PCs only lost 1 fight. A PC died at level 2. The party got revenge the next day.
The PCs had 2 big narrative losses. They failed to protect/rescue an NPC (they hide the NPC but eventually the NPC was found and kidnapped) and they caused a disaster (plague and hurricane).

Their fight win rate would be above 99.5% with a PC survival rate above 99.95%. Don't fixate on fight win rate. It is an unhealthy excuse causing you to ignore when your players tell you they feel it is too difficult.

1) Yes we know your group is toxic. But that does not invalidate or merge all their criticisms.

A) They can find multiple games run by multiple GMs to be too difficult. Honestly I suspect you use a higher fight difficulty in D&D 3E than I did in D&D 3E. I also suspect my D&D 3E would be too difficult for your group.

B) In D&D they complained about it being unfair which is a different complaint than it being too difficult. D&D is known for having different rules for monsters than for PCs. These players don't like that for some reason (I cannot guess which reason of the myriad).

3) You know plenty of ways to make it easier and you have scores of suggestions (even after removing the repeats). The main problem is you and your players want dramatically different things. You want it notably harder than I do. Your players want it significantly easier than I do.

However


Tonal / narrative reasons aside, I feel that this would make the game too long. It takes a long time to burn down the party's resources as is using fights that are individually trivial, so a solution like this that increases longevity over the session but not individual fights is going to draw out the sessions beyond what most people are comfortable running.

I suppose it could work if there was an understanding that the players were supposed to play recklessly as a result and the game was built with that in mind, but that really isn't a path I want to head down.
If I remember correctly your Hexcrawl sessions were 1 fight before they decided to return to town. This rule would elongate that to 13 fights (the party would pack it in when they had no more healing but still had most of their hp). Maybe that is too much, but you were complaining about it being too short before.

Also, this is advice for your group, not the system in general. Personally if I were using HoD I would only have Vitality x1 for self healing, however your group is a bunch of players that want low difficulty and a GM that wants to burn through attrition.



Once an NPC realizes this, he is not going to continue hitting the PC with fire attacks.

What I am NOT going to do is say "Immune to fire huh? Well, time to rip all the fire using enemies out of the monster manual. Prepare to fight nothing but frost monsters! Ice Ice Baby!"

Any idea how I could rephrase the line to get this across?

How you word that depends on how much agency the players have.
1) "In this world you might choose to fight enemies that change tactics based on what they learn about your defenses."
2) "" <-- Yes, saying nothing at all is possible. But maybe not for your group.
3) "In this campaign you will face some enemies with different tactics they can switch between depending on what they learn about the defenses they are facing"


Note that these issues are exactly the sort of thing I am trying to communicate to my players, so let me know how I can adjust my wording to better get this across.

"When you build your character, you will probably given them some strengths and weaknesses. Those strengths will be strengths. Those weaknesses will be weaknesses. I expect a variety of encounter, although I can't see the future, so I expect those strengths and weaknesses to be relevant at some point. It goes without saying that some strengths/weaknesses will be relevant more frequently than others. Oh, and parties can use teamwork."


As I said to Old Tree's above, the core of the issue with my games and the reason that I am writing this letter is that the players assume I am in absolute control of everything; and if they fail it is either because I am totally malicious or incompetent. So I am trying to get across that sometimes its just poor luck with the dice or bad plans on their part that cause failure, and is usually a combination of both. At the same time, I am trying not to sound so arrogant as to say that I never make mistakes or contribute to a failure.

Part of this is, the difficulty. Having a fine tuned difficulty and having a tailored difficulty are both GM choices that put some of the blame on the GM's shoulders. Being the game designer also puts some of the character generation blame on your shoulders. Owning these concerns in 2-4 sentences might help. In general being more concise, but not more cryptic, would help.

For these players I would break them out of that delusion by running a sandbox where the players have way more agency than they expected. I would use a static quo difficulty system (they can go fight weaker enemies, or stronger enemies). I would err on the side of giving too much information rather than too little. Unfortunately I don't think you would enjoy the dramatically reduced difficulty that would result.



stuffI was going to respond to your specific points, as you raise some valid concerns and ask a few straightforward questions early on, but as the post goes on it gets increasingly hostile and unreasonable, and I don't feel like anything good will come out of it.

I will say that, much like my players, you are asking for a bunch of contradictory stuff, and putting the DM in a binary situation of either "total control over every aspect of the game or a passive observer who is there to cater to the PCs every whim while having no fun of their own."

Likewise, you are falling into the classic trap of simultaneously calling me arrogant for giving the PCs too much advice and calling my cryptic and demanding the players "read my mind" for not giving enough advice. And demanding I be fair and impartial, while at the same time tailoring every encounter to the party.

Actually Kesnit seems like a good litmus test for your open letter. They are in a much less toxic group and yet you saw them get increasingly hostile as they read through your open letter. A direct reply to the specific points is unwise, but I highly encourage you to read through their post multiple times to see how your message invoked that effect.

Also I would strongly suggest listening to Kesnit's criticism rather than dismissing it. I saw nothing contradictory in their long post. Your summary seems to have picked up some of their main points but you frame them as false contradictions. What if those are not contradictions?

Quertus
2021-06-13, 12:16 PM
Short answer? Don't do that.

Medium answer: much like someone taking GNS, and trying to define everything from the PoV of a single axis, you sound like you only understand "Challenge", but are trying to define "Agency". Which is *why* your list needs work. Also, some of your "Challenge" ideas run contrary to agency.

So, let's step through this


1: I run a fair table, I do not fudge dice.
2: I do not put them in railroads of situations with only one correct solution.
3: Their character is theirs to control, but their actions have consequences.
4: I am trying to run a plausible world that is dangerous and where most NPCs are competent.
5: They can build their character however they like, but this has repercussions, both their strengths and their weaknesses will matter.
6: Teamwork and party synergy is the strongest form of power-gaming.
7: I am going to use a variety of enemies that are not tailored to defeat any one PC or the group as a whole.
8: NPCs will be of appropriate challenges, and are going to be played with tactics according to their intelligence.

Let's see what your players likely hear (a lot of which presumably isn't fair):

1) "You have the Agency to succeed or fail at the tactical layer as the dice decide". That one is good. (Even if it does contribute to your "killer GM" rep)

2) "Talakeal can be awkward in his communication, but wants us to believe that he isn't railroading us". This one is… communicating at the wrong layer. Try something like, "every puzzle and scenario that I create will not only have multiple solutions, but will be pre-approved to have multiple obvious solutions by [my evil overlord mandatory 5-year-old advisor / my non-gamer parents / the playground / some other respected authority on the matter] (and this is important) when given the exact same details that I will read to the party from my notes.

3) "Talakeal will give us enough rope to hang ourselves" (and, given past experiences, "won't give us the information and guidance necessary to have meaningful agency"). This one's tough. There is - conversationally - a really narrow path between Scilla and Charybdis here. And your players are not predispositioned to hear that you are on that path.

This could probably be its own thread.

4 & 5) "it doesn't matter what we build, Talakeal will have his monsters and NPCs target our weaknesses, and hide behind his fig leaf excuses of 'they're competent', 'it's supposed to be dangerous / a challenge', or some such". You can dispel a little of this by "publishing" your module ahead of time, before the players have even discussed their PCs.

7) "Talakeal wants us to believe that he is not targeting us (even though we know that he is)".

6&8) "we have no agency at the strategic layer - Talakeal will continue to force encounters to be 'Talakeal challenging' - or, as we call it, 'too hard'. And, worse, our only agency at the tactical layer is to fail, because Talakeal will rubber band the monster tactics if we use teamwork and do well".

What do we have?

1 has to do with agency. 2, 3, & 5 need to be reworded as a promise. 4 & 8 are actively detrimental to agency. 6 & 7 are just irrelevant.

So, were I editing this list, it might look like this:
1: I run a fair table, I do not fudge dice.
2: I do not put them in railroads of I do not create puzzles or situations with only one correct solution. And all my puzzles / situations will be pretested to have multiple obvious solutions from nothing more than the text which I will read to you, word for word.
3: Their character is theirs to control, but their actions have consequences. You are free to have your characters take whatever actions you like, within the bounds of "the social contract"; however, not all actions are equal. I recognize that I am heavily biased towards "heroics" and "challenge", and that this has caused problems in the past. In an attempt to remedy these problems and push past my biases, I have spoken with people online, and purpose the following "gamey" solutions to making actions have consequences: <see appendix>
4: I am trying to run a plausible world that is dangerous and where most NPCs are competent. To maximize your impact on the world, I am scaling back most of my NPCs from the power that I would normally give them, but you should expect them to be no less competent. This includes using whatever information about the party is obvious from looking at them, or obvious from stories told by / about them.
5: They can build their character however they like, but this has repercussions, both their strengths and their weaknesses will matter.
6: Teamwork and party synergy is the strongest form of power-gaming.
7: I am going to use a variety of enemies that are not tailored to defeat any one PC or the group as a whole. To the extent possible, NPC and monster statistics, personality, and general tactics will be detailed ahead of time. I will no longer rubber band their tactics based on how well you are doing. Thus, the better you are able to synergize, work together, utilize your strengths and cover each other's weaknesses, the better you will do. But, if you do not do so, expect your weaknesses to be a huge liability, as some of the encounters / monsters / whatever that I have created can and will punish such weaknesses.
8: NPCs will be of appropriate challenges 6: To maximize your agency, NPCs will no longer be guaranteed to be appropriate challenges (and are going to be played with tactics according to their intelligence).

Now, let's finish up #3 with a placeholder. Say,
"I used to aim for 80% resource expenditure. Now, although I am trying to aim for 60% resource expenditure, the world will no longer level up with you. So I'm giving the party a device to estimate the difficulty of a task: green for easy, below 60% resource expenditure expected; yellow for average, 60% resource expenditure expected; red for hard, the old 80% resource expenditure you'd expect from most of my old adventures; and black for suicidal.

If the party begins a dungeon, then leaves to go back to town, the dungeon will react. Each dungeon in the module has a response schedule / table. One dungeon might restock once, then relocate after a second failed run; another might restock partially (fully if not returned to within X cycles) *and* change tactics based on what they observed of the party; a third might roll on a table of random responses."

This gives them maximum agency to choose their difficulty, and helps them to accept the logical consequences of their actions.

The only thing missing (I think) is discussing how you're going to handle communication of things that they should already know.

OldTrees1
2021-06-13, 12:37 PM
So, let's step through this

Does this adequately cover character gen choices for weaknesses than then frequently become relevant? Talakeal's go to examples here are the super tank that is ignored and the unarmored low dexterity glass cannon that is frequently attacked. There are 2 aspects to this, there are the NPC choices during combat and the Player choices during character generation.

Pex
2021-06-13, 12:39 PM
I am being serious in my responses.


I am about to start a new campaign using my own system (link in sig!).

As many of you know, I have had a long history of disastrous gaming groups.

One thing I am trying to impress upon my players is that they have agency, and that their own decisions matter. It seems like they expect the DM to railroad them, and to dictate every turn of the game, to ignore both player agency and the dice. I want them to succeed by their own merits, and to acknowledge that not everything that happens is the DM's fault. In short, I am trying to convey the following:


1: I run a fair table, I do not fudge dice.
2: I do not put them in railroads of situations with only one correct solution.
3: Their character is theirs to control, but their actions have consequences.
4: I am trying to run a plausible world that is dangerous and where most NPCs are competent.
5: They can build their character however they like, but this has repercussions, both their strengths and their weaknesses will matter.
6: Teamwork and party synergy is the strongest form of power-gaming.
7: I am going to use a variety of enemies that are not tailored to defeat any one PC or the group as a whole.
8: NPCs will be of appropriate challenges, and are going to be played with tactics according to their intelligence.


Give this to your players. Do not give them your letter.

To this end, I wrote the following letter to them:

Your character is yours to build, but understand that in doing so you are making decisions which have consequences. Overly specializing means you excel in one area, but may be useless and bored when that area isn’t relevant. Likewise, a character who foregoes defense for offense may find themselves incapacitated too often to make use of their strengths, while one who foregoes offense for more defense might simply be ignored in favor of softer targets and contributing little.

In other words, play a generalist. Do not be good at anything because the DM will exploit your weakness. The DM will make you pay for being good at something.

Likewise, I tend to play enemies smart, and they will tend to use whatever methods are at their disposal to target your weaknesses. If you have a low strength, expect to be tripped or grappled; if you have no ranged weapon, expect to be kited; if you have no armor, expect to take a lot of damage, if you have low fortitude expect poison to be a problem, and if you have low resolve expect to fall prey to mind control or magic when it shows up.

The DM will make your character's life miserable. Doesn't matter how cool you think your character is. The DM will find a way to make you suffer.

I will be using a wide array of enemy types and locations; this means that there shouldn’t be one offense or defense that will be the key too everything. Some characters will be better in some sessions than others, but it will all more or less balance out in the end.

The most effective form of power gaming is synergizing your abilities with those of your comrades and working together as a team.

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

Do not make your character powerful. Do not show individual thought. Do not be better in some way. Play together at all costs. If you stand out in any way the DM will target you.

This game is going to be fair, but ruthless. There are no house rules in place to protect your characters, and if you make a mistake or bite off more than you can chew, I will not step in to save you.

Do not criticize anything. Your opinion means nothing. Expect your character to die and you will like it. The DM is your enemy.


I know it’s frustrating to lose, and if something bad happens to your character I know most people’s first instinct is to find something or someone to blame and then lash out at it, but understand that when you do that you are going to put everyone else on edge, which will make the next instance that much more severe.

The DM really means it. No whining. You say anything the DM will make it worse for you.

A note for newer players; Brian, Bob, and I have been gaming together for decades, and we all have long memories. If one of us starts bitching about something that happened long ago, please regard it as the ramblings of a grumpy old man rather than a legitimate piece of gaming advice.

The DM's old friends may backtalk the DM, but new players will remain silent.

I will not put in problems that require one specific solution. If your first idea doesn’t work, please don’t become frustrated. Instead, try a different approach; do not assume you are in a no win situation or a puzzle which requires a very specific answer.

The DM might be fair. He also might be looking for a solution he likes despite what he says.

Challenge and Rewards:
Most missions will be calibrated against the standard party following the difficulty guidelines in the book.

There will occasionally be a high risk / high reward or low risk / low reward mission when it makes sense, but these are rare.

The DM will throw you a bone once in a while when he feels like it.

Completing a mission successfully rewards five wealth. There will also be up to five optional objectives which can further increase wealth.

The average mission will deplete most of your resources; i.e. vitality, mana, destiny, and charged artifacts or abilities. What you have left over can be used to help accomplish optional objectives or saved for activities during the recovery phase such as crafting or gambling.


The average mission is a gruelfest. You won't necessarily die, but you will be close to it.


If you struggle, which you sometimes will, and it can be the result of poor tactics, bad dice rolls, character builds which are weak against the particulars of the mission, or balancing mistakes on my part, you can usually pull through by taking on debts; usually in the form of potions or mercenaries, which will reduce your wealth.


You cannot do things on your own. You will have to depend on NPCs. You will owe them debts giving them power over you. Your characters will never be wealthy.


If you feel you cannot possibly complete the mission without risking your characters life, it is permissible to turn back; but doing so should only be a last resort as you will fall drastically behind the wealth curve and may alienate your patrons or otherwise let opportunities slip away.


You can always retreat, but you'll wish you didn't.

The ideal Heart of Darkness character is brave, yet cunning. The objective of the game is to use your resources wisely, making the maximum impact for as little expenditure as possible, so that your resources will carry you as far as you can, completing the mission, all optional objectives, and having some left over for the recovery phase.

Remove this from your letter. Add it to your list above.

Note on Challenge:

These are my statistics for past playtests:

Players complete 93% of missions they attempt.

The average mission is worth seven wealth after bonus objectives and debts.

Player characters expend, on average, 80% of their resources in a given mission.


But, when upon reading the draft, my most level headed and trusted player summed it up as "I am hardcore, and I play to win! You will all die, and when you do don't come crying to me like a bitch!" which is not exactly what I was going for.

But it is what you are telling them.

And suggestions for how I can better convey what I am trying to say?

Do not give them this letter.

Talakeal
2021-06-13, 01:28 PM
Stuff

Thanks for the advice. I am not, however, going to play a nerfed campaign, I am going to be running this one precisely fair and by the book. And I am certainly not going to run a sandbox.

My mistake last time was running an unconventional game with a bunch of house rules for new players, this one is going to be very back to basics.

Five and six are really important. Five was a constant point of frustration in the last game, Bob made a character with high offense and a two strength, and then declared that grappling was "cheating". Brian made a character who was a melee specialist, and then said he was justified in throwing a tantrum and threatening to leave the group every time they found a monster who couldn't be meleed because the frustration of being able to out-weigh all the joy of gaming. I really need to stress that they shouldn't build weaknesses into their characters that ruin their enjoyment of the game.

Likewise, there is no real optimization level in this game. A character's overall effectiveness is completely determined on teamwork and party synergy.


Also, the players all but beg me to give them CR appropriate encounters. Like, their first complaint after finishing a fight it "this wasn't balanced tightly enough." It may be detrimental to agency, but if I stop doing it I guarantee you will get a plethora of new horror stories over the next few years about it.

"Rubber-banding" is entirely a forum complaint that my players have never mentioned, and they reacted with horror at the idea when I told them I was going to stop doing it, its probably where a lot of this "I am in it to win, I am going to kill you and make you cry like a bitch" talk is coming from.

As for number two, I really don't know how to handle this. Having pre-written solutions AT ALL makes them retreat to the "read the GM's mind" excuse, and they have an open policy of ignoring boxed text. Likewise, they can turn any solution, even if its just scene dressing, into a puzzle, nobody is going to have the patience to idiot proof them all for me.


Stop right here. Talakeal I have none of the baggage your group has and I don't see this open letter as being about agency. If I saw this open letter then I would summarize it as the DM giving a heavy handed warning about the difficulty. I would not assume you were talking about agency. If I want to tell someone about the moon, I don't do so with a wall of text about oak trees. Shorter would be better. On point would be better.


Agency is probably not the right term, titles are hard.

TLDR, I am trying to get them to stop looking for other people (usually me but also one another) to blame for their challenges / failures, and instead accept that their own decisions and the luck of the dice have as big of an impact on the game, both mechanically and narratively, as the will of the DM, and the outcome of an event is an emergent property of the collective dice rolls, and the decisions made by all of the players at the table, including the DM.


Dude, just take a break and get a different group. Try running 5e D&D with other friends for a while. Or, alternatively, let somebody else DM. I feel like you are putting yourself in a box here that you do not need to be in.

I have actually taken a two year break from DMing, during which time I have been a PC in three different games.

But I am at the point where I have come up with so many ideas for games I want to run that I just can't bring myself hold off any longer.


Also I would strongly suggest listening to Kesnit's criticism rather than dismissing it. I saw nothing contradictory in their long post. Your summary seems to have picked up some of their main points but you frame them as false contradictions. What if those are not contradictions?

Well, for example, he says that I am leaving the players completely clueless and guessing when it comes to resource expenditure, and then a few lines later says I am being arrogant and controlling when I give advice on how to handle resource expenditure.

Which is exactly the kind of mixed message I get from my players if I don't give them PRECISELY the right amount of information and guidance.


B) Maybe use a static quo difficulty that caps at the party's level. It really sounds like having easier fights exist would be helpful. To use D&D as an analogy if the party can fight ogres, let them encounter easy fights against orcs.


I do that all the time. Its just that it is usually part of a larger session rather than just kicking outclassed orcs in the face all night long.

It is not uncommon, at all, to have fights where the players suffer no negative consequences or resource expenditure, indeed it probably happens at least once or twice a session.


Another example is helping the player know what the character knows about their plans. You mentioned the players are trying to ask you if their plan will work. That means they have insufficient information to guess themselves. However their characters might not have insufficient information. Or if the characters do have insufficient information, why do they not know and what could they investigate? Informing the players can help them.

Normally its something that the character's don't know. Like, to use an ultra simple example, their characters don't have any lore skills, and ask me if fire, ice, or lightning, will work best, and I tell them there characters don't know, why don't they try and see? So, I know the monster is weak to lightning, the party comes in and uses a fire spell, then an ice spell, and then freaks out at the invincible monster and runs away. Then when I ask them why they never tried lightning, they tell me they forgot and it is my fault for not reminding them. Of course, if I do remind them, then they bitch at me for railroading them or for being condescending by assuming they forgot something.

To use an actual story, one time the villain was a doppleganger impersonating a vampire. I dropped numerous hints, and at one point after describing the vampire's reflection, one of the players corrected me, thinking I had made a mistake, to which I informed him that while his character knows vampires don't have reflections, this one does.

So, campaign goes along, and they end up using a bunch of positive energy spells on the vampire (this was 3.5) healing it during the fight and making the fight harder than it needed to be, but still nowhere near a challenge.

When they finally killed it and reverted to its true form, they of course were bitter about the wasted spell slots, and told me that there was no way they could possibly have known it wasn't really undead, to which I listed off the plethora of clues, which they claimed they never noticed. When I pointed out the mirror, they told me that they forgot, and then yelled at me for not reminding them.

So, not only do I need to keep notes for them, but I need to be aware of what they notice, and also bring it up again every time it could be significant (whether or not they have figured out the significance) in case they forgot.

I also had one guy who didn't pay attention to anything, let alone write notes, but took the eidetic memory merit and literally expected me make decisions for his character as a result, which is not a behavior I want to encourage in the slightest.



2) You do control the difficulty, you are very secretive, and your language about difficulty sounds like you will rubberband the difficulty. That gives the impression that you are using tailored difficulty. If the PCs lose against tailored difficulty, it usually is the GM making an error in estimating the difficulty. Even if the PCs lose due to bad tactics, that is the GM making an error in estimating the tailored difficulty.

Out of curiosity, where are you getting the secretive from?

I am generally pretty open about stuff, to the point where the players can learn virtually anything they want to know about an opponent with an easy skill test if they bother to ask.

Is this something from this letter, or something you are extrapolating from previous stories?


Part of this is, the difficulty. Having a fine tuned difficulty and having a tailored difficulty are both GM choices that put some of the blame on the GM's shoulders. Being the game designer also puts some of the character generation blame on your shoulders. Owning these concerns in 2-4 sentences might help. In general being more concise, but not more cryptic, would help.


Flexible character creation is a feature of the system, not a bug.

I just need players to realize that if they choose to take on a weakness, it is in fact going to be a weakness, and if they choose to over-specialize, their versatility will suffer.

Its not that doing this is a problem, I love them to create the characters they want to play. The problem is that they create characters they only want to play some of the time and then take it out on me or their fellow players.

Talakeal
2021-06-13, 01:35 PM
I am being serious in my responses.



Do not give them this letter.

Ok, so yeah, here is another example of contradiction.


Forum Advice: "This is a communication issue. Have a session zero. Be open about issues and expectations. Be honest with one another and listen to what the other side is saying."

Vs:

Also Forum Advice: "Do not tell them anything as they will take it in the worst possible light, and flat out accuse you of lying. Just remain silent!"



But yeah, if that is what you are reading from it, it is completely opposite to my actual play experience or my intentions.

For example, I am not telling them to make homogeneous characters (that is actually a terrible party), quite the opposite.

What I am saying is, for example, if you choose to take a weakness to poison and then use it to buy more strength, that is a trade-off with ups and downs. Do not look at it as "Woohoo! Free building points! Look how much damage I am doing! Wait a minute, some of the enemies in this game actually use poison? WAAAAH KILLER DM!!!!" (Or for a real example, the mage above who chose to give his character a two strength and then declared grappling to be cheating.)

Squire Doodad
2021-06-13, 02:17 PM
But yeah, if that is what you are reading from it, it is completely opposite to my actual play experience or my intentions.

For example, I am not telling them to make homogeneous characters (that is actually a terrible party), quite the opposite.

What I am saying is, for example, if you choose to take a weakness to poison and then use it to buy more strength, that is a trade-off with ups and downs. Do not look at it as "Woohoo! Free building points! Look how much damage I am doing! Wait a minute, some of the enemies in this game actually use poison? WAAAAH KILLER DM!!!!" (Or for a real example, the mage above who chose to give his character a two strength and then declared grappling to be cheating.)

It's not about what you write, it's about how it is read. At least one person has explicitly stated that if they read that letter coming from a GM they have no past experience with, they'd take it to mean "I am going to make this very difficult, I'm going to give you a fighting chance but also optimize everything to go after you specifically and make everything from the Dark Lord's General to the wights on the road know exactly how to counter a generalized version of your build".



For example, I am not telling them to make homogeneous characters (that is actually a terrible party), quite the opposite.

No one is saying that.
What is being said is that it feels as if you are telling the players that anything they do, any special traits, will all have weaknesses sniffed out and exploited.
The way you've put it makes it feel like you're reading their Miranda Rights, instead of "You can make any build you want. Your foes will be smart about how they use their OWN abilities, but 99% of the time they won't automatically know YOUR abilities or be optimized to kill you."


Ok, so yeah, here is another example of contradiction.


Forum Advice: "This is a communication issue. Have a session zero. Be open about issues and expectations. Be honest with one another and listen to what the other side is saying."

Vs:

Also Forum Advice: "Do not tell them anything as they will take it in the worst possible light, and flat out accuse you of lying. Just remain silent!"

What's being said here is
"Do not give them that letter as it is very easily misread to be something terrible. It's also too long and easily misunderstood. Take what we've said so far and try to make a clearer, more compact version of what you want to say. We'll help you workshop it if you need to."

Personally I found that small 8 point list to be pretty good, that'd be a decent starting point. Try to keep it at 10 or fewer things.

Pex
2021-06-13, 02:54 PM
Ok, so yeah, here is another example of contradiction.


Forum Advice: "This is a communication issue. Have a session zero. Be open about issues and expectations. Be honest with one another and listen to what the other side is saying."

Vs:

Also Forum Advice: "Do not tell them anything as they will take it in the worst possible light, and flat out accuse you of lying. Just remain silent!"



But yeah, if that is what you are reading from it, it is completely opposite to my actual play experience or my intentions.

For example, I am not telling them to make homogeneous characters (that is actually a terrible party), quite the opposite.

What I am saying is, for example, if you choose to take a weakness to poison and then use it to buy more strength, that is a trade-off with ups and downs. Do not look at it as "Woohoo! Free building points! Look how much damage I am doing! Wait a minute, some of the enemies in this game actually use poison? WAAAAH KILLER DM!!!!" (Or for a real example, the mage above who chose to give his character a two strength and then declared grappling to be cheating.)

Communication is great, but how you're saying it matters. Your letter absolutely reads like a Killer DM who will not accept feedback from players. Your introductory list and concluding statement were fine. They conveyed what you wanted to say without lecture. A person you know and trust said the letter made you look bad. I agree with that thought. It reads fire and brimstone.

I know where you're coming from. You had horrible experiences with players and want to address all those bad experiences so they don't happen again. I am the same way but with DMs. I like to think I have mellowed in my rhetoric and hope I have from how I was many years ago. My opinions haven't changed, only the way I express them. Your letter is warning players to behave by expressing negative consequences for anything they do you don't like.

Tick off the DM and you get wished into the cornfield.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxTMbIxEj-E

OldTrees1
2021-06-13, 03:20 PM
Agency is probably not the right term, titles are hard.

TLDR, I am trying to get them to stop looking for other people (usually me but also one another) to blame for their challenges / failures, and instead accept that their own decisions and the luck of the dice have as big of an impact on the game, both mechanically and narratively, as the will of the DM, and the outcome of an event is an emergent property of the collective dice rolls, and the decisions made by all of the players at the table, including the DM.

If you try to tell them that, it will sounds like you are ignorant of how much impact you have exerted as the game developer and as a GM that wants fine tuned difficulty.

Additionally the tendency for them to blame you, and for you to blame them, is part of your group's attitude problem. You cannot fix them just like they can't fix you. You keep mentioning the control they have and the control the dice have. They respond by mentioning the control you have. Both of you exaggerate and ignore the other.

I hope they are also getting outside advice. The fact that you ask for advice, even when you struggle to listen, is a good sign.


Well, for example, he says that I am leaving the players completely clueless and guessing when it comes to resource expenditure, and then a few lines later says I am being arrogant and controlling when I give advice on how to handle resource expenditure.

Which is exactly the kind of mixed message I get from my players if I don't give them PRECISELY the right amount of information and guidance.

There was no contradiction there. Obviously the best response would be to assume there was no contradiction and then ask Kesnit to help you understand.

In this case it sounds like:
1) You are using a very fine tuned difficulty that expends most of the PCs' resources before the PCs can recharge. This implies there is a very narrow margin for error about using resources. If they under/over estimate an encounter they might fail the mission due to lack of resources. However you are distancing yourself from their choice that lead to under/over estimating the encounter. That behavior implies you don't want to be blamed when the players under/over estimate the encounter. However you are the only source of information about the difficulty of the encounter. So your distancing sends the message that you will leave the players clueless about when they need to spend which resources.

2) Your open letter does come across as arrogant and controlling. It does sound like you are saying "The Mission will cost most of your resources. You better use the right ones at the right time or else fail the mission. I won't tell you when to use each ability. It will be your fault if you mess up and don't use ability A when it is time to use ability A." Now a lot of #2 is your tone when combined with the criticism from #1.

Of course you are wise and humble enough to accept you might be misunderstanding what Kesnit said and to ask Kesnit to help explain their 6 points.


I do that all the time. Its just that it is usually part of a larger session rather than just kicking outclassed orcs in the face all night long.

It is not uncommon, at all, to have fights where the players suffer no negative consequences or resource expenditure, indeed it probably happens at least once or twice a session.

Thank you for reminding me. You had mentioned that in a previous thread this month and I forgot.

It sounds like the session is still the same difficulty. That means there is some rubber banding effect. However the existence of some easy fights should still be having some positive impact.


Out of curiosity, where are you getting the secretive from?

I am generally pretty open about stuff, to the point where the players can learn virtually anything they want to know about an opponent with an easy skill test if they bother to ask.

Is this something from this letter, or something you are extrapolating from previous stories?

I did not get it from the letter. It is from context around how you treat PC knowledge and how resistant you are to Quertus' transparency suggestions.

Secretive is a relative term. Below are 2 example where you talk about hints. Your first example stonewalled their investigation. Your second example had too few hints for this group. Both examples show areas where you were too secretive about knowledge.

However I would like to say that the numerous hints example is probably mostly due to your specific group. If you showed Quertus 3 of those hints you might have had better results. However you know your players and thus know some hints don't count for much.



Normally its something that the character's don't know. Like, to use an ultra simple example, their characters don't have any lore skills, and ask me if fire, ice, or lightning, will work best, and I tell them there characters don't know, why don't they try and see? So, I know the monster is weak to lightning, the party comes in and uses a fire spell, then an ice spell, and then freaks out at the invincible monster and runs away. Then when I ask them why they never tried lightning, they tell me they forgot and it is my fault for not reminding them. Of course, if I do remind them, then they bitch at me for railroading them or for being condescending by assuming they forgot something.

To use an actual story, one time the villain was a doppleganger impersonating a vampire. I dropped numerous hints, and at one point after describing the vampire's reflection, one of the players corrected me, thinking I had made a mistake, to which I informed him that while his character knows vampires don't have reflections, this one does.

So, campaign goes along, and they end up using a bunch of positive energy spells on the vampire (this was 3.5) healing it during the fight and making the fight harder than it needed to be, but still nowhere near a challenge.

When they finally killed it and reverted to its true form, they of course were bitter about the wasted spell slots, and told me that there was no way they could possibly have known it wasn't really undead, to which I listed off the plethora of clues, which they claimed they never noticed. When I pointed out the mirror, they told me that they forgot, and then yelled at me for not reminding them.

So, not only do I need to keep notes for them, but I need to be aware of what they notice, and also bring it up again every time it could be significant (whether or not they have figured out the significance) in case they forgot.

I also had one guy who didn't pay attention to anything, let alone write notes, but took the eidetic memory merit and literally expected me make decisions for his character as a result, which is not a behavior I want to encourage in the slightest.


1) Why did you default to "The PCs don't know, and can't even try to think of anything relevant"?
2) Why was the monster viewed as "invincible" after they tried only 2 attacks? I know it was weak to lightning, but was it immune to ice/fire? Was it so difficult it could only be defeated if the party found a weakness?
3) They want the reminders, because the PC would remember, so it is fair for the player to be reminded, but they don't want condescension. Sounds like you should give the reminder but without the condescension. (To be fair your general communication tone could be improved. However I do not feel skilled enough to help.)

4) How many hints was "numerous hints"? On average how many of them would be needed to know it was not a vampire? On average how many of them would be needed to know it was a Doppelganger?

Lets call "Total Hints / Number to Know it was not a Vampire = Not Vampire Hints"
Lets call "Total Hints / Number to Know it was a Doppelganger = Doppelganger Hints"

Whatever these numbers turn out to be, double them going forward and make the hints 20% more obvious on average.

5) The hint about the reflection might have backfired when you said "This vampire has a reflection" instead of "This Lord has a reflection". To your players the former might have implied "Oh this is a homebrew vampire like Twilight" rather than "Hmm, is one of my assumptions wrong?".
6) How many of the "numerous hints" were self destructive like the reflection hint? This is a bit hard to measure.

7) Tell the players you will not take notes for them, they have to take their own notes (although some players do take mental notes). Tell them you have your own notes but they will not necessarily cover the same things. Then try to take notes for them anyways for when they forget and ask questions their characters already know. This is part of GMing. I ask my players questions about their characters. They ask me questions about what their characters know about the world. However it is important to establish that it is the players' job collectively to take sufficient notes.




Flexible character creation is a feature of the system, not a bug.

I just need players to realize that if they choose to take on a weakness, it is in fact going to be a weakness, and if they choose to over-specialize, their versatility will suffer.

Its not that doing this is a problem, I love them to create the characters they want to play. The problem is that they create characters they only want to play some of the time and then take it out on me or their fellow players.

I did not say "Flexible character creation was a bug".

I said the developer of HoD and the GM implementing the fine tuned difficulty also share some of the blame around the outcome of encounters. Trying to distance and absolve yourself of all blame while demanding the players accept all blame will not work. Don't play the toxic blame game. Instead why not recognize and mention the impact you have? If sincere, that can increase the credibility of your statements about their impact. Of course this works better the more reasonable the players are.

icefractal
2021-06-13, 03:33 PM
I feel like a lot of responses in this thread are taking the worst possible reading of that letter, and also taking the stance that the foes having anything past really rudimentary AI is metagaming to target the players' weaknesses. On the other hand, given what I've heard of them, that probably is what Talakeal's players think, so points for accuracy maybe?

But since it's not clear how much this is "from the POV of T's players" vs "I really believe this", I have a question to the thread -

There is an Aboleth (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/aboleth.htm), which the party is going to fight in its lair. What does that lair look like?

My answer would be - at least partially underwater, because the Aboleth is aquatic. Lots of Illusory Walls and Programmed Images to trick people, because it can set those up at-will, easily making hundreds a day if it wants to. It or its minions, if it has any, may very well be Veil'd (again, at-will and lasts 16 hours). The entire layout of the place may be disguised by Mirage Arcana.

That's a normal Aboleth. An Aboleth which sat there in a simple room with no tricks and a small pool of water not deep enough to hide in? That would be the variant, who - because of foolishness or imprisonment or whatever - is effectively weakened, not able to use its full abilities.

Agree or disagree on that?

OldTrees1
2021-06-13, 04:01 PM
I feel like a lot of responses in this thread are taking the worst possible reading of that letter, and also taking the stance that the foes having anything past really rudimentary AI is metagaming to target the players' weaknesses. On the other hand, given what I've heard of them, that probably is what Talakeal's players think, so points for accuracy maybe?

But since it's not clear how much this is "from the POV of T's players" vs "I really believe this", I have a question to the thread
Most are POV of T's players. Some of it is the tone of the letter itself inspiring taking the worse reading, so you get some comments about tone. Most of it is we know the thread is about Talakeal's group rather than about groups in general.

To answer your Aboleth question: Agreed, but I would not risk an Aboleth in this group.

PS: I don't see that stance in this thread unless you are explicitly talking about one of Talakeal's players.

Mechalich
2021-06-13, 04:30 PM
There is an Aboleth (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/aboleth.htm), which the party is going to fight in its lair. What does that lair look like?

My answer would be - at least partially underwater, because the Aboleth is aquatic. Lots of Illusory Walls and Programmed Images to trick people, because it can set those up at-will, easily making hundreds a day if it wants to. It or its minions, if it has any, may very well be Veil'd (again, at-will and lasts 16 hours). The entire layout of the place may be disguised by Mirage Arcana.

That's a normal Aboleth. An Aboleth which sat there in a simple room with no tricks and a small pool of water not deep enough to hide in? That would be the variant, who - because of foolishness or imprisonment or whatever - is effectively weakened, not able to use its full abilities.

Agree or disagree on that?

An aboleth has persistent spellcasting abilities. This is fairly rare, especially at CR 7, and makes it a particularly high-variance encounter. An aboleth with dozens of illusions setup and a tailored lair is a significantly higher CR encounter than an aboleth that just got dropped into a big aquarium tank next to the PCs.

Even with simpler monsters circumstances and enemy preparation matter for an encounter. A Hill Giant is also CR 7, and while it has nothing like an aboleth's array of options, one that's able to spring an ambush from atop a cliff with a bag of rocks to hand is a lot more dangerous than one on flat ground.

Part of the question in a scenario like this is how much responsibility falls on the party versus the GM to avoid said ambush (especially in a system other than D&D where circumstances may actually be far more telling mechanically). I suspect that part of the tension is that while nasty encounters and pitfalls in Talakeal's games may be avoidable, they require operating with a high level of paranoia and tactical awareness as suggested from the clue examples given that many of the players simply don't find fun.

Speaking for myself, I often find increasing game difficulty erodes my enjoyment of gameplay far more rapidly than it impedes my ability to continue. I think that may be a big part of the issue here.

Cluedrew
2021-06-13, 05:07 PM
To Talakeal: I have a better question: Why send this? This is not the "why play with them" question, I'm just asking what do you hope to accomplish with this letter? Even if you communicate your play-style and expectations perfectly, what will that change? It will not make your players become more emotionally mature or kinder, nor will it change the type of game they enjoy. And I think that is much more of a problem than a misunderstanding about play-style.

King of Nowhere
2021-06-13, 05:19 PM
Its hard not to sound patronizing. In this case, my group is made up of two types of people, new players and players who have meltdowns when something doesn't go their way in the game, and I am trying to get across my expectations and what sort of behavior is and isn't acceptable at the table.

new... players....
your said "new players". as in, you get people who are not with your exhisting group to play with your group.

so, you actually can disband your old group and get only new players. In fact, you should do it even more.
you see, if you bring a new player into your toxic group, the poor guy will be trained to be a toxic player. toxicity is catching, like a disease. Your group is the carrier, and we are all hoping that it can be suppressed, but if it can't be suppressed, it should at least quarantined.
every time you bring a new unsuspecting player into your group, you are training a new toxic player.

get your new players in a new group where you can train them better. and let your old players to fester alone.

Oh, and by the way, with new players you should be more careful, because they don't realize things you take for granted. and yes, it is your responsibility to help your new players in their build - not by handing them pregens, but by giving some advice. actually, it is anyone's responsibility, but given your other players, you are the only one who could do it.

icefractal
2021-06-13, 05:34 PM
Speaking for myself, I often find increasing game difficulty erodes my enjoyment of gameplay far more rapidly than it impedes my ability to continue. I think that may be a big part of the issue here. That's fair. TBH, while I don't think the letter comes off as bad or tyrannical, if it was the ad for a group I'd probably pass. Because it sounds (maybe accurately, maybe not) like a game where I'd have to be 100% "on" and maintaining sharp mental focus for the entire time. And that's no longer what I'm looking for in a TTRPG.

Same thing would apply for a serious game about relationships that was improv-heavy, incidentally. Nothing wrong with that premise, but it's not something I can improv well, and trying to sustain it for hours sounds exhausting.

Time Troll
2021-06-13, 06:03 PM
Well, like most others I'll say this letter just won't work the way you want, and worse many won't be happy to read it.

If a player is a "nuclear reactor with a core overload" coming into the game....they will "meltdown" at the slightest brush of anything.

And if your players will just say every time something happens that "the DM did it", then you can't really go anywhere from there as...the DM does do everything. And when the players go further down the path of "the DM does all this stuff against us personally", there is no coming back from that. You can it's logical that when the players start a murderhobo slaughter the guard is called out to stop the characters....the the players will only see "the DM stopped our fun".

And there is no way out of the RPG mechanics hole, unless you add rules and change the game. The "meltdown player waiting to go off" will always melt down as soon as their melee character is in a ranged encounter.

You want to play a radically different game then your players....so you will rarely have a decent time.

NichG
2021-06-13, 06:18 PM
If you want to run X and figure out the magic words that make people who don't want X to like it, we can't help you. This letter certainly won't stop complaints, because it reads to me as 'I am going to do the things that you complained about, and I feel strongly that that's how games should be, and you should like it'.

If you want to say 'this is what I'm willing to run, if that doesn't sound appealing then you should look for another GM' then this letter could be okay. Though in that case you'd actually have to say that last bit.

But if you're not willing to get a different group of players, and they're not willing to get a different GM, and you're not willing to run what they want, and what they want isn't going to be something you'd enjoy running, and you don't want there to be complaints, well: sorry, that's just not going to happen.

icefractal
2021-06-13, 08:37 PM
Thinking about this again - is agency even what your players want? It seems like they actively disclaim agency - possibly because they don't want to make impactful choices which might be wrong and might put them permanently behind.

Specifically, this part:
If you struggle, which you sometimes will, and it can be the result of poor tactics, bad dice rolls, character builds which are weak against the particulars of the mission, or balancing mistakes on my part, you can usually pull through by taking on debts; usually in the form of potions or mercenaries, which will reduce your wealth.

If you feel you cannot possibly complete the mission without risking your characters life, it is permissible to turn back; but doing so should only be a last resort as you will fall drastically behind the wealth curve and may alienate your patrons or otherwise let opportunities slip away.That's not just attrition, that's permanent consequences. Which could originate from just not being efficient/sharp enough, or even sufficiently unlucky - avoiding blatantly ****ing up isn't enough to keep you safe.

Also, they're unfortunately realistic consequences. We can laugh and cheerfully accept being sliced in half by an ogre, because it isn't real to us! Not only the ogre, but I've never faced someone seriously trying to kill me, and I doubt the majority of other RPG players have either. But being in debt, falling behind, alienating important people, missing opportunities? Those are problems most of us face, so real you can taste them - and they taste like ****.

Some people enjoy confronting their actual problems in a fictional context, but I just find it depressing. Infinite possible worlds, and I'm still facing the same issues? And fictional triumphs can feel pretty hollow when you know it means nothing to solving the same problems IRL.

If that's the category your players fall into, this isn't a wording problem - they're just fundamentally not going to enjoy facing permanent negative consequences, regardless of how fair it was.

Duff
2021-06-13, 09:01 PM
I'll be brutally honest: I would regard the above section as a red flag if I got this from a DM.

I presume you're just trying to provide examples of weaknesses, which is okay. However, this section leaves the unintentional impression that you're going to be using your knowledge of the character sheets to go for the weakest aspect of each character in each encounter. When playing I'd come to regard that as BS in pretty short order because it obviates any character I build, since unless I optimise or consult a character-building guide to cover all my weaknesses, it makes no difference what character I bring or what skills I bring to the encounter; my weakest aspect will always be targeted. When I read this passage, as a player, I hear: "I, your DM, won't even bother pretending that the hobgoblins were waiting around for a bunch of random travellers. I'm going to be giving those hobgoblins a copy of your CS and lots of time for them to study it and work out the most optimal strategy to kill you, as well as a heads-up when you're coming round the bend."


Saintheart ain't wrong.

Can I suggest (Bold just hilighting my edits, not intended to go into your final version)

Likewise, I tend to play intelligent enemies smart, and they will tend to observe how your characters look and act use whatever methods are at their disposal to target your those weaknesses. If you have a low strength, expect to be tripped or grappled; if you have no ranged weapon, expect to be kited; if you have no armor, expect to take a lot of damage full Stop. New sentance with a starts with Also if you have low fortitude expect poison to be a problem, and if you have low resolve expect to fall prey to mind control or magic when it whenever itshows up and that once an intelligent foe has hit you with this sort of ability, they're going to work out that you're a soft target for this and then will keep hitting you

Talakeal
2021-06-13, 09:28 PM
Saintheart ain't wrong.

Can I suggest (Bold just hilighting my edits, not intended to go into your final version)

Likewise, I tend to play intelligent enemies smart, and they will tend to observe how your characters look and act use whatever methods are at their disposal to target your those weaknesses. If you have a low strength, expect to be tripped or grappled; if you have no ranged weapon, expect to be kited; if you have no armor, expect to take a lot of damage full Stop. New sentance with a starts with Also if you have low fortitude expect poison to be a problem, and if you have low resolve expect to fall prey to mind control or magic when it whenever itshows up and that once an intelligent foe has hit you with this sort of ability, they're going to work out that you're a soft target for this and then will keep hitting you

Those are some pretty good edits; although at this point I have kind of given up any idea of talking to them at all as the majority of people I have talked to think that any attempt to address the issues will only make them worse.


Thinking about this again - is agency even what your players want? It seems like they actively disclaim agency - possibly because they don't want to make impactful choices which might be wrong and might put them permanently behind.

Specifically, this part:That's not just attrition, that's permanent consequences. Which could originate from just not being efficient/sharp enough, or even sufficiently unlucky - avoiding blatantly ****ing up isn't enough to keep you safe.

Also, they're unfortunately realistic consequences. We can laugh and cheerfully accept being sliced in half by an ogre, because it isn't real to us! Not only the ogre, but I've never faced someone seriously trying to kill me, and I doubt the majority of other RPG players have either. But being in debt, falling behind, alienating important people, missing opportunities? Those are problems most of us face, so real you can taste them - and they taste like ****.

Some people enjoy confronting their actual problems in a fictional context, but I just find it depressing. Infinite possible worlds, and I'm still facing the same issues? And fictional triumphs can feel pretty hollow when you know it means nothing to solving the same problems IRL.

If that's the category your players fall into, this isn't a wording problem - they're just fundamentally not going to enjoy facing permanent negative consequences, regardless of how fair it was.

Yeah, that's a good point.

It isn't so much, I think, that my game is too hard for them, its that they are a weird intersection of casual gamers and perfectionists; they don't really want to put effort into the game, but can't handle missing out on a single XP, GP, or objective.


If you want to run X and figure out the magic words that make people who don't want X to like it, we can't help you. This letter certainly won't stop complaints, because it reads to me as 'I am going to do the things that you complained about, and I feel strongly that that's how games should be, and you should like it'.

If you want to say 'this is what I'm willing to run, if that doesn't sound appealing then you should look for another GM' then this letter could be okay. Though in that case you'd actually have to say that last bit.

But if you're not willing to get a different group of players, and they're not willing to get a different GM, and you're not willing to run what they want, and what they want isn't going to be something you'd enjoy running, and you don't want there to be complaints, well: sorry, that's just not going to happen.

The thing is, its not really that they don't enjoy my games or my style; its just that, for whatever reason, they just don't know how to deal with failure and have a ton of misdirected anger which causes them to explode at someone or something every five sessions or so, and that is what I am trying to resolve here.

Duff
2021-06-13, 09:54 PM
The thing is, its not really that they don't enjoy my games or my style; its just that, for whatever reason, they just don't know how to deal with failure and have a ton of misdirected anger which causes them to explode at someone or something every five sessions or so, and that is what I am trying to resolve here.

The best way to deal with failure is a "Growth Mindset". So how about awarding XP for failure?
You'd need to balance it so they don't want to fail for tactical reasons, but it could take the sting out. Maybe, critical failed rolls give a smallish bonus, the first time a PC goes down in combat in an adventure a moderate bonus and a large bonus for any player who can articulate what their character learned from a failed mission?

Another option would be some sort of "karma" mechanic where the failure now helps with success later. Again, you may need to be careful to avoid a situation where attempting an impossible task now seems like a good idea just to get the bonuses later when it matters

Composer99
2021-06-13, 09:56 PM
The thing is, its not really that they don't enjoy my games or my style; its just that, for whatever reason, they just don't know how to deal with failure and have a ton of misdirected anger which causes them to explode at someone or something every five sessions or so, and that is what I am trying to resolve here.

To be kind of blunt, I don't think any open letter that you can pen will resolve this.

Neither you nor anyone else at the table ought to be obliged to put up with angry outbursts - frankly, if any of your players are "explod at someone or something every five sessions or so", it's past time to uninvite them until they stop. Anyone with a "ton of misdirected anger" should get that sorted out - [I]away from the gaming table.

Talakeal
2021-06-13, 09:57 PM
new... players....
your said "new players". as in, you get people who are not with your exhisting group to play with your group.

so, you actually can disband your old group and get only new players. In fact, you should do it even more.
you see, if you bring a new player into your toxic group, the poor guy will be trained to be a toxic player. toxicity is catching, like a disease. Your group is the carrier, and we are all hoping that it can be suppressed, but if it can't be suppressed, it should at least quarantined.
every time you bring a new unsuspecting player into your group, you are training a new toxic player.

get your new players in a new group where you can train them better. and let your old players to fester alone.


I get about one player a year, and about half of those either turn out to be crazy, druggies, or crazy druggies and have to be ejected from the group, or just flake out and never actually show up.

Furthermore, most of the new players are friends of existing players.

Trying to pull a whole new gaming group from whole cloth just ain't gonna happen. I might be able to eventually pull it off if I started running adventure league games at the hobby store and building up a huge list of contacts, but that is a ton of time and effort for something that might never pay off.


To Talakeal: I have a better question: Why send this? This is not the "why play with them" question, I'm just asking what do you hope to accomplish with this letter? Even if you communicate your play-style and expectations perfectly, what will that change? It will not make your players become more emotionally mature or kinder, nor will it change the type of game they enjoy. And I think that is much more of a problem than a misunderstanding about play-style.

I don't know.

I just really want them to accept that their dice rolls, build decisions, and tactical decisions have as much of an impact on the outcome of the game, both success and failures, than the whims of a capricious and sadistic all powerful GM.

I also want them to try and understand that there are not good or bad character builds, just those that synergize with the party and those that don't, and that you need to be able to live with the drawbacks that you give your character rather than throwing fits and accusing other people of cheating.


Oh, and by the way, with new players you should be more careful, because they don't realize things you take for granted. and yes, it is your responsibility to help your new players in their build - not by handing them pregens, but by giving some advice. actually, it is anyone's responsibility, but given your other players, you are the only one who could do it.

Is advice a good thing? Because Pex and Kesnit both seemed to be very strongly opposed to the idea.



In this case it sounds like:
1) You are using a very fine tuned difficulty that expends most of the PCs' resources before the PCs can recharge. This implies there is a very narrow margin for error about using resources. If they under/over estimate an encounter they might fail the mission due to lack of resources. However you are distancing yourself from their choice that lead to under/over estimating the encounter. That behavior implies you don't want to be blamed when the players under/over estimate the encounter. However you are the only source of information about the difficulty of the encounter. So your distancing sends the message that you will leave the players clueless about when they need to spend which resources.

2) Your open letter does come across as arrogant and controlling. It does sound like you are saying "The Mission will cost most of your resources. You better use the right ones at the right time or else fail the mission. I won't tell you when to use each ability. It will be your fault if you mess up and don't use ability A when it is time to use ability A." Now a lot of #2 is your tone when combined with the criticism from #1.

But that just isn't true. I have been playing this game, and similar RPGs, for almost thirty years now, and players failing a mission for lack of resources as all but unheard of. Maybe 1 in 50 sessions if that?

And I explicitly followed it up with advice about how to approach resource expenditure, which was soundly criticized and rejected.


It sounds like the session is still the same difficulty. That means there is some rubber banding effect. However the existence of some easy fights should still be having some positive impact.

Is "rubber-banding" going to be the new "gotcha?" An ill defined term that comes to be shorthand for anything I do the forum doesn't like?

In this case I take it that rubber-banding is being used to mean balancing an adventure as a whole for characters of the player's power level?

Because if so, guilty as charged, at the utmost insistence of my players.


I said the developer of HoD and the GM implementing the fine tuned difficulty also share some of the blame around the outcome of encounters. Trying to distance and absolve yourself of all blame while demanding the players accept all blame will not work. Don't play the toxic blame game. Instead why not recognize and mention the impact you have? If sincere, that can increase the credibility of your statements about their impact. Of course this works better the more reasonable the players are.

Ok, how are we defining blame?

I build the mission with a white room difficulty equating to ~80% resource expenditure. That is intentional. Variation from dice rolls, player builds, tactical decisions, and math errors can and will cause that to fluctuate over the course of the game, and sometimes it will even push it over 100%. That is intentional, and that is my "fault".

The thing is though, anytime it fluctuates above 80%, the players immediately start discounting their actions, builds, or dice rolls, and instead insist that it is all my fault because I messed up the math / am cheating / am tailoring encounters to screw them / am tricking them / am out to get them for some imagined slight / intentionally made an over CRed adventure, etc.

Or they blame one another, sometimes that happens as well.

Squire Doodad
2021-06-13, 10:19 PM
Yeah, that's a good point.

It isn't so much, I think, that my game is too hard for them, its that they are a weird intersection of casual gamers and perfectionists; they don't really want to put effort into the game, but can't handle missing out on a single XP, GP, or objective.

I should emphasize that it's not that it's permanent consequences that reinforce difficulty that's the problem here. Rather, it is permanent consequences to try to keep up, as well as the fact that it is a painfully realistic and unenjoyable means of doing so. If you want to give the player a way to catch up to the rest, throw in a small dungeon for the party and give that particular player bonus EXP because it's that player's quest. "Avenging my uncle, who was slain by the Troll King" or something. Then again, a lot of DnD versions make it so you can miss a level or two and be in line with the rest of party.

Overall, long-standing debt is something lots of people don't want to think about in a game like DnD. Period. Debt should only be present if it's something that affects the party as a whole and, more importantly, to function as a plot hook.

In other words, the only debt that should be relevant to most fantasy DnD campaigns isn't actual financial debt, just a mechanism by which the party is brought to a certain quest.

Talakeal
2021-06-13, 10:30 PM
I should emphasize that it's not that it's permanent consequences that reinforce difficulty that's the problem here. Rather, it is permanent consequences to try to keep up, as well as the fact that it is a painfully realistic and unenjoyable means of doing so. If you want to give the player a way to catch up to the rest, throw in a small dungeon for the party and give that particular player bonus EXP because it's that player's quest. "Avenging my uncle, who was slain by the Troll King" or something. Then again, a lot of DnD versions make it so you can miss a level or two and be in line with the rest of party.

Overall, long-standing debt is something lots of people don't want to think about in a game like DnD. Period. Debt should only be present if it's something that affects the party as a whole and, more importantly, to function as a plot hook.

In other words, the only debt that should be relevant to most fantasy DnD campaigns isn't actual financial debt, just a mechanism by which the party is brought to a certain quest.

If I am following, I think you may be misunderstanding what debt means in this context.

Basically, rather than counting coins, characters in Heart of Darkness have a wealth rating. At the end of each adventure you modify your wealth rating by the net result of your objectives (a catch all term for treasures and goals) minus your debts (a catch all term for expenses incurred during the adventure).

Its not that you actually need to take out a loan and pay it back over time or anything of the sort, and the game expects you to take on some debts, you would quickly run out of things to buy if you didnt.

OldTrees1
2021-06-13, 10:35 PM
Is advice a good thing? Because Pex and Kesnit both seemed to be very strongly opposed to the idea.

Please don't misrepresent the advice you are given. There is a difference between someone saying "Don't give this specific text or anything with the same tone and attitude problems" vs "Don't give advice".

If someone told me "Don't swear" I would not claim that they told me "Don't speak".


But that just isn't true. I have been playing this game, and similar RPGs, for almost thirty years now, and players failing a mission for lack of resources as all but unheard of. Maybe 1 in 50 sessions if that?

And I explicitly followed it up with advice about how to approach resource expenditure, which was soundly criticized and rejected.


1) Are you wise enough to ask Kesnit? Are you humble enough to presume you are misunderstanding what they said?
2) Kesnit was talking about how your open letter reads. The fact that the reading is not true about your game says a lot about how the open letter is flawed.
3) Did you consider the criticism or did you misrepresent it as saying all advice is bad?



Is "rubber-banding" going to be the new "gotcha?" An ill defined term that comes to be shorthand for anything I do the forum doesn't like?

...

Because if so, guilty as charged, at the utmost insistence of my players.
No. Rubber banding is a well defined term that I consider to have a neutral connotation. Although yes I bent it to refer to the overall session instead of individual encounters.

Although it sounds like the players won't like some days being easier than other days as long as no day is worse than a level appropriate session? If true, then it was good that you listened to your players. I retract that suggestion.




Ok, how are we defining blame?

I build the mission with a white room difficulty equating to ~80% resource expenditure. That is intentional. Variation from dice rolls, player builds, tactical decisions, and math errors can and will cause that to fluctuate over the course of the game, and sometimes it will even push it over 100%. That is intentional, and that is my "fault".

The thing is though, anytime it fluctuates above 80%, the players immediately start discounting their actions, builds, or dice rolls, and instead insist that it is all my fault because I messed up the math / am cheating / am tailoring encounters to screw them / am tricking them / am out to get them for some imagined slight / intentionally made an over CRed adventure, etc.

Or they blame one another, sometimes that happens as well.

You designed the system. You chose the target difficulty. You know the players which matters when you calculate the difficulty of an encounter or the set of encounters for a session. You designed the PC character generation. You know the PCs. You have an idea of how much of a mistake will have how much of a consequence. You designed the system. You chose how tight the difficulty would be (that 80% with tiny hp for example). You chose how big the variation from dice rolls would be.

I expect you realize all of that. I expect you are willing to own all of that impact. However if your letter is just talking about blaming the players for their impact without you acknowledging the extent of your impact, it will not go over as well with reasonable players than if you did acknowledge the extent of your impact.

Of course you will remember that I qualified this subthread by saying I was concerned your players might not be reasonable enough.

NichG
2021-06-13, 10:35 PM
Is "rubber-banding" going to be the new "gotcha?" An ill defined term that comes to be shorthand for anything I do the forum doesn't like?

In this case I take it that rubber-banding is being used to mean balancing an adventure as a whole for characters of the player's power level?

Because if so, guilty as charged, at the utmost insistence of my players.


I don't think its rubber-banding in this case, but there is a sort of anti-agency thing. You have a difficulty curve that a given party can get ahead of or fall behind on. If someone is falling behind, their supervisors shouldn't keep giving them harder and harder duties just based on how long they've been with the organization - that's one way you get dysfunctional organizations (related to the Peter Principle). If the players can't say e.g. 'okay, we're Lv9, but last time we went up against CR 9 foes it felt pretty shaky, lets just do a CR 5 mission this time', then that's a big hit against them being able to be responsible for their own success and failure.

Squire Doodad
2021-06-13, 10:54 PM
If I am following, I think you may be misunderstanding what debt means in this context.

Basically, rather than counting coins, characters in Heart of Darkness have a wealth rating. At the end of each adventure you modify your wealth rating by the net result of your objectives (a catch all term for treasures and goals) minus your debts (a catch all term for expenses incurred during the adventure).

Its not that you actually need to take out a loan and pay it back over time or anything of the sort, and the game expects you to take on some debts, you would quickly run out of things to buy if you didnt.

Okay, that makes more sense. Personally I'd be against the word "debt" being used (maybe "expense" or something) but that's evidently not important right now.

Anyways, moving on to the next 53 predicaments and outstanding issues.

Wait, so if there aren't any coins, do players actually know they get any amount of loot from fights aside from magical items they find? Or is their monetary profit from an adventure summed up at the end and they don't know how much it'd be until then.




You designed the system. You chose the target difficulty. You know the players which matters when you calculate the difficulty of an encounter or the set of encounters for a session. You designed the PC character generation. You know the PCs. You have an idea of how much of a mistake will have how much of a consequence. You designed the system. You chose how tight the difficulty would be (that 80% with tiny hp for example). You chose how big the variation from dice rolls would be.

I expect you realize all of that. I expect you are willing to own all of that impact. However if your letter is just talking about blaming the players for their impact without you acknowledging the extent of your impact, it will not go over as well with reasonable players than if you did acknowledge the extent of your impact.

Of course you will remember that I qualified this subthread by saying I was concerned your players might not be reasonable enough.

Isn't CR meant to be "a party of a given level should be able to defeat this using no more than 50% of their resources" or something?

icefractal
2021-06-13, 11:10 PM
Isn't CR meant to be "a party of a given level should be able to defeat this using no more than 50% of their resources" or something?In 3.x, CR = ECL would be about 20% of the party's resources, on average.

Of course that's not an even fight. CR = [the party's CR], meaning usually ECL+4, would be theoretically an even fight, meaning it likely takes most of your resources if you even survive.

May be completely different in Heart of Darkness though.

Squire Doodad
2021-06-14, 12:06 AM
In 3.x, CR = ECL would be about 20% of the party's resources, on average.

Of course that's not an even fight. CR = [the party's CR], meaning usually ECL+4, would be theoretically an even fight, meaning it likely takes most of your resources if you even survive.

May be completely different in Heart of Darkness though.

Given the use of the word "decimate" in military contexts, that must be one hell of a fight if you have a level-appropriate war.

Saintheart
2021-06-14, 12:13 AM
Given the use of the word "decimate" in military contexts, that must be one hell of a fight if you have a level-appropriate war.

Playground, what's an appropriate EL for an encounter with a People's Republic of China? For context, my party is an optimised Wizard calling himself the United States, three Fighters named Australia, France, and England, and a Truenamer called New Zealand.

Onos
2021-06-14, 12:42 AM
Yet another thread detailing your latest escapades! From the glance I've had, it seems like you're running the same game as ever - oh look, your players have said the same thing. Have you considered just trying to run a simple, on-rails game the way your players seem to want? It's becoming increasingly obvious that there's a huge mismatch between gaming styles at your table. No amount of tweaking the rules of Soulsborne will make it fun if the rest of the table wants Mario.

Quertus
2021-06-14, 01:32 AM
Originally, I was going to limit my reply to just the items outside the spoilers, to drive the focus to those ideas. But I think that I might forget to circle back later, so I included several miscellaneous ideas in spoilers.


Thanks for the advice. I am not, however, going to play a nerfed campaign, I am going to be running this one precisely fair and by the book. And I am certainly not going to run a sandbox.

My mistake last time was running an unconventional game with a bunch of house rules for new players, this one is going to be very back to basics.
Agency is probably not the right term, titles are hard.

TLDR, I am trying to get them to stop looking for other people (usually me but also one another) to blame for their challenges / failures, and instead accept that their own decisions and the luck of the dice have as big of an impact on the game, both mechanically and narratively, as the will of the DM, and the outcome of an event is an emergent property of the collective dice rolls, and the decisions made by all of the players at the table, including the DM.


I just need players to realize that if they choose to take on a weakness, it is in fact going to be a weakness, and if they choose to over-specialize, their versatility will suffer.

Its not that doing this is a problem, I love them to create the characters they want to play. The problem is that they create characters they only want to play some of the time and then take it out on me or their fellow players.

OK, here's what I just heard: "Agency" and "Challenge" are *both* red herrings; what you actually care about is maturity. You're trying to trick your players into magically being more mature than they have been, by telling them that they have agency.

Before I offer any suggestions on this path, please confirm the accuracy of this assessment.


Five and six are really important. Five was a constant point of frustration in the last game, Bob made a character with high offense and a two strength, and then declared that grappling was "cheating". Brian made a character who was a melee specialist, and then said he was justified in throwing a tantrum and threatening to leave the group every time they found a monster who couldn't be meleed because the frustration of being able to out-weigh all the joy of gaming. I really need to stress that they shouldn't build weaknesses into their characters that ruin their enjoyment of the game.

Also, the players all but beg me to give them CR appropriate encounters. Like, their first complaint after finishing a fight it "this wasn't balanced tightly enough." It may be detrimental to agency, but if I stop doing it I guarantee you will get a plethora of new horror stories over the next few years about it.

"Rubber-banding" is entirely a forum complaint that my players have never mentioned, and they reacted with horror at the idea when I told them I was going to stop doing it, its probably where a lot of this "I am in it to win, I am going to kill you and make you cry like a bitch" talk is coming from.

I am only referring to rubber banding the tactics, of making the monsters fight harder when the party is doing well vs holding the idiot ball when the party is doing poorly.


As for number two, I really don't know how to handle this. Having pre-written solutions AT ALL makes them retreat to the "read the GM's mind" excuse, and they have an open policy of ignoring boxed text. Likewise, they can turn any solution, even if its just scene dressing, into a puzzle, nobody is going to have the patience to idiot proof them all for me.

I have an idea. Two, actual. Feel free to use one or both. Create boxed text. Test it with us / your parents / a random 5-year-old (or several). Record the solutions that they were able to divine from the boxed text. Then

1) have one of your players read the boxed text aloud;

2) make all unlocked boxed text available online.

This gives your players the ability to focus on (and to remember, without taking notes) the important (and necessary) details.



1) You are using a very fine tuned difficulty that expends most of the PCs' resources before the PCs can recharge. This implies there is a very narrow margin for error about using resources. If they under/over estimate an encounter they might fail the mission due to lack of resources. However you are distancing yourself from their choice that lead to under/over estimating the encounter. That behavior implies you don't want to be blamed when the players under/over estimate the encounter. However you are the only source of information about the difficulty of the encounter. So your distancing sends the message that you will leave the players clueless about when they need to spend which resources.

This! This is wording I've been searching for!

Talakeal, if you replace every complaint by your players that your game is "too hard" with this, with a complaint that your game leaves little margin for error (or, the way your players might word it, that the players have to read your mind, and play the game your way, else they fail), what would your response be?


5) The hint about the reflection might have backfired when you said "This vampire has a reflection" instead of "This Lord has a reflection". To your players the former might have implied "Oh this is a homebrew vampire like Twilight" rather than "Hmm, is one of my assumptions wrong?".


6) How many of the "numerous hints" were self destructive like the reflection hint?

Changing small details like this can change how effectively ideas are communicated, including… word… producing negative communication. Calling it "self destructive" is good, but I want to emphasize that different phases have different values, and some of those values are negative. Much like how the original letter had negative value to produce its desired result, or saying that the Avatar of Hate could not be killed by violence made the players focus on nonviolent ways to kill it, etc.


Does this adequately cover character gen choices for weaknesses than then frequently become relevant? Talakeal's go to examples here are the super tank that is ignored and the unarmored low dexterity glass cannon that is frequently attacked. There are 2 aspects to this, there are the NPC choices during combat and the Player choices during character generation.

Sorry, I'm too tired / dumb / something to understand your question / comment here. If it's still relevant, can you reword it for me?


7) Tell the players you will not take notes for them, they have to take their own notes (although some players do take mental notes). Tell them you have your own notes but they will not necessarily cover the same things. Then try to take notes for them anyways for when they forget and ask questions their characters already know. This is part of GMing. I ask my players questions about their characters. They ask me questions about what their characters know about the world. However it is important to establish that it is the players' job collectively to take sufficient notes.

That is also a good solution: building a culture of player self-sufficiency. In fact, it's probably the *best* answer *if* the goal is to increase the maturity of the group.

That said, what do you think of my "boxed text" idea (in the other spoiler)?


I did not say "Flexible character creation was a bug".

I said the developer of HoD and the GM implementing the fine tuned difficulty also share some of the blame around the outcome of encounters. Trying to distance and absolve yourself of all blame while demanding the players accept all blame will not work. Don't play the toxic blame game. Instead why not recognize and mention the impact you have? If sincere, that can increase the credibility of your statements about their impact. Of course this works better the more reasonable the players are.
If you try to tell them that, it will sounds like you are ignorant of how much impact you have exerted as the game developer and as a GM that wants fine tuned difficulty.

Additionally the tendency for them to blame you, and for you to blame them, is part of your group's attitude problem. You cannot fix them just like they can't fix you. You keep mentioning the control they have and the control the dice have. They respond by mentioning the control you have. Both of you exaggerate and ignore the other.

Indeed, if the goal is to increase the maturity of the group, being able to admit fault - and learn from it and do better! - could go a long way towards showing them the right path.

But… and this may be too advanced but… is there any groundwork that needs to be laid before "being the mature one" can be effective?

Batcathat
2021-06-14, 01:38 AM
I doubt any letter – no matter how perfectly worded – is going to solve this situation.

That said, I am curious... what do they say when you make these arguments in person? Do they straight up not listen to them or do they offer an explanation for their point of view?

Satinavian
2021-06-14, 03:28 AM
To this end, I wrote the following letter to them:Ok, let's see how i as a player would understand this.



Your character is yours to build, but understand that in doing so you are making decisions which have consequences. Overly specializing means you excel in one area, but may be useless and bored when that area isnÂ’t relevant. Likewise, a character who foregoes defense for offense may find themselves incapacitated too often to make use of their strengths, while one who foregoes offense for more defense might simply be ignored in favor of softer targets and contributing little.a) how you build is actually relevant (good thing)
b) but tanking will not be a viable strategy, don't build for it

Likewise, I tend to play enemies smart, and they will tend to use whatever methods are at their disposal to target your weaknesses. If you have a low strength, expect to be tripped or grappled; if you have no ranged weapon, expect to be kited; if you have no armor, expect to take a lot of damage, if you have low fortitude expect poison to be a problem, and if you have low resolve expect to fall prey to mind control or magic when it shows up.Playing enemies smart sounds good. Enemies always targettng weaknesses sounds bad. That reeks of metagaming. If you had written "target weaknesses they know or learn about" that would support the "playing smart" part, but as it is, it sounds as if you play it like a boardgame with enemies as your playing pieces.

I will be using a wide array of enemy types and locations; this means that there shouldnÂ’t be one offense or defense that will be the key too everything. Some characters will be better in some sessions than others, but it will all more or less balance out in the end.superflous. That is something every GM always tries to do anyway. Maybe you mention it because of past trouble.

The most effective form of power gaming is synergizing your abilities with those of your comrades and working together as a team.That means : You are expected to create characters together and build for synergies.

This game is going to be fair, but ruthless. There are no house rules in place to protect your characters, and if you make a mistake or bite off more than you can chew, I will not step in to save you.No PC is saved via deus ex machina. But there are no other safety nets either and it might very well be a meatgrinder.

I know itÂ’s frustrating to lose, and if something bad happens to your character I know most peopleÂ’s first instinct is to find something or someone to blame and then lash out at it, but understand that when you do that you are going to put everyone else on edge, which will make the next instance that much more severe.Yeah, it is a meatgrinder. Don't get attached for you will be sorry.

A note for newer players; Brian, Bob, and I have been gaming together for decades, and we all have long memories. If one of us starts bitching about something that happened long ago, please regard it as the ramblings of a grumpy old man rather than a legitimate piece of gaming advice.It is a long running group with established dynamics i have to adept to.

I will not put in problems that require one specific solution. If your first idea doesnÂ’t work, please donÂ’t become frustrated. Instead, try a different approach; do not assume you are in a no win situation or a puzzle which requires a very specific answer.No puzzles.

Challenge and Rewards:
Most missions will be calibrated against the standard party following the difficulty guidelines in the book.

There will occasionally be a high risk / high reward or low risk / low reward mission when it makes sense, but these are rare.

Completing a mission successfully rewards five wealth. There will also be up to five optional objectives which can further increase wealth.Basic mechanical stuff. Whether thist works depends on how well medium risk/medium reward scenarios go as those will be the mast majority. But nothing particular noteworthy about, in most groups most challanges are appropriate.

The average mission will deplete most of your resources; i.e. vitality, mana, destiny, and charged artifacts or abilities. What you have left over can be used to help accomplish optional objectives or saved for activities during the recovery phase such as crafting or gambling.If the average mission is intended to deplete most of our ressources, then the average mission and a bit bad luck is a failed mission. You will have many of those. Also, if you can use leftover ressources for downtime hat means, ressources you actually spend on mission make you permanently weaker. The system encourages you to be real stingy while at the same time makes it really hard to win consistently. This will be a very hard and difficult game.

If you struggle, which you sometimes will, and it can be the result of poor tactics, bad dice rolls, character builds which are weak against the particulars of the mission, or balancing mistakes on my part, you can usually pull through by taking on debts; usually in the form of potions or mercenaries, which will reduce your wealth.So there is some kind of safety, but using it makes you permanently weaker. But potions and mercenaries sound as if you have to buy/hire them before you actually know you need them. So the safety is not actually in place unless you pay the cost. Sounds like a death spiral on campaign level.

If you feel you cannot possibly complete the mission without risking your characters life, it is permissible to turn back; but doing so should only be a last resort as you will fall drastically behind the wealth curve and may alienate your patrons or otherwise let opportunities slip away.Retreating or shying away from missions that seem too hard is strongly discouraged and comes with penalties beyond just not getting the reward. That one would bother me greatly.

The ideal Heart of Darkness character is brave, yet cunning. The objective of the game is to use your resources wisely, making the maximum impact for as little expenditure as possible, so that your resources will carry you as far as you can, completing the mission, all optional objectives, and having some left over for the recovery phase.I want you to play like in a roguelike video game. That is the dynamic i aim for. You need to be above average in tactics to succeed and the majority of missions is stuff is so difficult that a nomal adventurer that is not super reckless might ant to pass.


Note on Challenge:

These are my statistics for past playtests:

Players complete 93% of missions they attempt.

The average mission is worth seven wealth after bonus objectives and debts.

Player characters expend, on average, 80% of their resources in a given mission.That is nice information, but not really helpful for a new player until they know how long missions last, how heavily the other players optimize or how competent they are.


But, when upon reading the draft, my most level headed and trusted player summed it up as "I am hardcore, and I play to win! You will all die, and when you do don't come crying to me like a bitch!" which is not exactly what I was going for.

And suggestions for how I can better convey what I am trying to say?Seems like your trusted player basically got it.

If something offered me a campaign like that, i would probably give it a pass. Seems too hardcore. Especcially the whole last part basically screams "I have had players before complaining that my game is too hard. Now i am looking for players that want this kind of challenge".


--------------------------------------

On an unrelated note, if all your new players are introduced by your two oldtime players and they are all either cracy or drug addicts, have you ever considered that there might be a realation ? Maybe it is less that your region has only bad players and more that the circles of your friends are not good for recruiting ?
Also, if you have problems with oldtimers poisoning the well, it is very bad to rely on those oldtimers to do your recruitment for you. Every new player will know them better than you and trust them more than you and will have heard their stories about your game.

OldTrees1
2021-06-14, 05:51 AM
Sorry, I'm too tired / dumb / something to understand your question / comment here. If it's still relevant, can you reword it for me?



That is also a good solution: building a culture of player self-sufficiency. In fact, it's probably the *best* answer *if* the goal is to increase the maturity of the group.

That said, what do you think of my "boxed text" idea (in the other spoiler)?


Talakeal also wanted players to be more mature about the consequences of their character generation choices. You, Quertus, made some suggested changes. I did not see anything in those changes for this specific concern. Then Talakeal rejected your changes. So it does not seem to be a relevant question anymore.


I believe your suggestions about transparency (the box text being the latest addition) are good choices for this group.

Pauly
2021-06-14, 07:17 AM
I am about to start a new campaign using my own system (link in sig!).

As many of you know, I have had a long history of disastrous gaming groups.

One thing I am trying to impress upon my players is that they have agency, and that their own decisions matter. It seems like they expect the DM to railroad them, and to dictate every turn of the game, to ignore both player agency and the dice. I want them to succeed by their own merits, and to acknowledge that not everything that happens is the DM's fault. In short, I am trying to convey the following:


1: I run a fair table, I do not fudge dice.
2: I do not put them in railroads of situations with only one correct solution.
3: Their character is theirs to control, but their actions have consequences.
4: I am trying to run a plausible world that is dangerous and where most NPCs are competent.
5: They can build their character however they like, but this has repercussions, both their strengths and their weaknesses will matter.
6: Teamwork and party synergy is the strongest form of power-gaming.
7: I am going to use a variety of enemies that are not tailored to defeat any one PC or the group as a whole.
8: NPCs will be of appropriate challenges, and are going to be played with tactics according to their intelligence.


To this end, I wrote the following letter to them:


The letter is too long detailed and gets into the weeds. I’d stick with just the bullet points.

Here is how I would word it.
My promises as a DM to the players.
1) I promise the dice will be called as they fall, whether that be good or bad.
2) I promise that each situation will have multiple paths to success. I also promise that if the group find a successful path that I had not previously considered I will honor their success.
3) I promise that the choices made by your characters will influence the world. Future options may be broadened or narrowed depending in the actions your character takes now.
4) I promise that the NPCs will act in a logical and reasonable manner considering the world they live in. The world they live in is more dangerous than ours and they have survived in it so far.
5) I promise that the campaign has already been written and will not be altered for the benefit or detriment of the character you design.
6) I promise that the challenges are designed so that no one character will be able to achieve the optimal outcome. I promise that teamwork will be rewarded.
7) I promise that the combat encounters have already been written. The enemies in each encounter have been chosen to provide a variety of challenges. I promise you will not have to grind the same encounter over and over again. I promise that no one character type will have an advantage or disadvantage over the campaign, but they may be advantaged or disadvantaged in particular encounters.
8) I promise that the enemies will :
- a) take actions based on their intelligence.
- b) take actions based solely on what it is reasonable for those enemies to know based on prior interactions with the party and. what they can see.
- c) not take actions based on information that I as a DM know, but the enemies could not know.
- d) not be equipped specifically to deal with the party, unless they have prior intelligence on the party. I also promise that if the party do attract the attention of an enemy capable of sending targeted assassins I will give the party multiple hints before such an encounter occurs.


I just really want them to accept that their dice rolls, build decisions, and tactical decisions have as much of an impact on the outcome of the game, both success and failures, than the whims of a capricious and sadistic all powerful GM.

I also want them to try and understand that there are not good or bad character builds, just those that synergize with the party and those that don't, and that you need to be able to live with the drawbacks that you give your character rather than throwing fits and accusing other people of cheating.

Then add
My request for the players
1) Please be active. Your choices will affect the outcome of the campaign. Positive active roleplaying will give you more opportunities for success than passive wait-and-see roleplaying.
2) There are no “good”or “bad” character types. However there are good and bad parties. When designing your characters please consider how well your party will work together.
3) Please remember that any drawbacks you give your character will affect the party, not just your character.
4) Try to work together as a party. This will improve your chances of finding the best solutions to a situation. This may mean your character has to step into or step out if the spotlight at different times.

Cluedrew
2021-06-14, 07:56 AM
I don't know.

I just really want them to accept that their dice rolls, build decisions, and tactical decisions have as much of an impact on the outcome of the game, both success and failures, than the whims of a capricious and sadistic all powerful GM.

I also want them to try and understand that there are not good or bad character builds, just those that synergize with the party and those that don't, and that you need to be able to live with the drawbacks that you give your character rather than throwing fits and accusing other people of cheating.You want emotional maturity from your players. There is nothing you can write in a letter that will cause that. No one improves at anything they don't want to improve on.

False God
2021-06-14, 08:25 AM
You want emotional maturity from your players. There is nothing you can write in a letter that will cause that. No one improves at anything they don't want to improve on.

Especially themselves.

Jakinbandw
2021-06-14, 09:48 AM
Why do you want to run a game that you know your players won't enjoy?

What do you want out of GMing? For me I want to see Heroes battle evil and win, permanently changing the world. I want to see them come across difficult moral choices and solve them, possibly by finding a 3rd option.

For me that means combat difficulty is secondary. I have one player who loves having his PC take permanent damage and wounds, and now only has one arm. My other player just wants a goal to work toward and doesn't want things to change midway through. That does limit my options, but there is still a lot of room to mess around with.

You keep bringing up difficulty. Why? Why is it important for you that the tactical portion of the game is difficult. Again, what do you want out of gming?

What do your players want?

Is there any overlap, or are your desires mutually exclusive?

King of Nowhere
2021-06-14, 11:04 AM
Is advice a good thing? Because Pex and Kesnit both seemed to be very strongly opposed to the idea.



there is a vast gulf between an old, seasoned player, who may take build advice as an insult to his skill and competence, and a new recruit in over his head with character options, who generally appreciates some inputs.

also, you'd be generally better off in telling them how to achieve their build objectives than in trying to shoehorn them into some option. so if the squishy wizard asks you how to get more magical power, telling them of an option they missed is generally well received. telling them they should focus on their defences instead... well, depends on how paternalizing you sound and how mature is the player

Quertus
2021-06-14, 11:32 AM
That's fair. TBH, while I don't think the letter comes off as bad or tyrannical, if it was the ad for a group I'd probably pass. Because it sounds (maybe accurately, maybe not) like a game where I'd have to be 100% "on" and maintaining sharp mental focus for the entire time. And that's no longer what I'm looking for in a TTRPG.

That is another possible interpretation.

Talakeal, if this is what your players actually mean when they complain that your game is too hard, how would you resolve this issue?


If you want to run X and figure out the magic words that make people who don't want X to like it, we can't help you.

*Mostly* true. And, for Bizarro World, arguably doubly true.

Of all the problems to try tackle, though, that is definitely about the last we should even consider fixing.


This letter certainly won't stop complaints, because it reads to me as 'I am going to do the things that you complained about, and I feel strongly that that's how games should be, and you should like it'.

If you want to say 'this is what I'm willing to run, if that doesn't sound appealing then you should look for another GM' then this letter could be okay. Though in that case you'd actually have to say that last bit.

But if you're not willing to get a different group of players, and they're not willing to get a different GM, and you're not willing to run what they want, and what they want isn't going to be something you'd enjoy running, and you don't want there to be complaints, well: sorry, that's just not going to happen.

Point.

Perhaps, rather than, "how can i make my players enjoy what they hate", Talakeal should open a new thread, "how can I learn to love the games that my players want me to run". That only involved changing one person, and the one we have access to, to boot! Likely a much more productive thread.


Those are some pretty good edits; although at this point I have kind of given up any idea of talking to them at all as the majority of people I have talked to think that any attempt to address the issues will only make them worse.

You should probably QUOTE which messages you misinterpreted this way, so that we can help you improve the other end of your communication skills, too. Communication being one of the big issues at your table, and one that this thread is about.

Speaking of (and I really should QUOTE you), you said you had a player comment that an encounter wasn't Talakeal-style razor-edge balanced.

You took this to mean that your players *want* everything to be a balanced encounter. And that may well be the case.

However, the way you wrote it, I could also interpret it as them teasing you, and actually wanting less "Talakeal balanced" encounters. Or not caring one way or the other.

If that player is still around, I encourage you to explicitly ask them.

Further, I encourage you to explicitly ask all of your players if they're actually onboard with "the world scales with you; encounters will always be balanced" or not.


Yeah, that's a good point.

It isn't so much, I think, that my game is too hard for them, its that they are a weird intersection of casual gamers and perfectionists; they don't really want to put effort into the game, but can't handle missing out on a single XP, GP, or objective.

That's yet a third possibility.

So, if you look at every instance of them saying "this is too hard" that way, what would your strategy to resolve this issue be?

And what plans do you have to distinguish between the 4 possible interpretations of "too hard" suggested in this thread thus far (the 4th being "none of the above")?


The thing is, its not really that they don't enjoy my games or my style; its just that, for whatever reason, they just don't know how to deal with failure and have a ton of misdirected anger which causes them to explode at someone or something every five sessions or so, and that is what I am trying to resolve here.

So… you want your players to be more mature?

Why do you expect that a letter from you will be able to make that happen?

Why did you expect that a letter from you, focusing on challenges, would affect that change?


Talakeal also wanted players to be more mature about the consequences of their character generation choices. You, Quertus, made some suggested changes. I did not see anything in those changes for this specific concern. Then Talakeal rejected your changes. So it does not seem to be a relevant question anymore.

Ah, thanks. When I wrote my first post, I was taking Talakeal at his word that the topic was "Agency", without actually thinking about it, like I should have. Makes sense that *much* of what I wrote would not be relevant to "Maturity".


I believe your suggestions about transparency (the box text being the latest addition) are good choices for this group.

My brain is clearly still on vacation. What other things have I said that fall under "transparency"?


Here is how I would word it.
My promises as a DM to the players.

Just wanted to say that, not only was that an excellent post, but this bit really captures the necessary tone.

Kudos!

OldTrees1
2021-06-14, 12:07 PM
My brain is clearly still on vacation. What other things have I said that fall under "transparency"?

Previously you had various suggestions about showing the players the monster stats, or hand them a copy of the adventure after the fact, etc.

Talakeal
2021-06-14, 01:08 PM
I have longer responses for Quertus and Old Trees, but I don’t have time to type out or edit them right now, stay tuned.

I will say that, as for the vampire, its not that there was any misunderstanding going on. The players spotted the clue, mentioned it, and then never a ted upon it, and when I later asked them why, they told me that they forgot and it should have been my job to remind them.



I don't think its rubber-banding in this case, but there is a sort of anti-agency thing. You have a difficulty curve that a given party can get ahead of or fall behind on. If someone is falling behind, their supervisors shouldn't keep giving them harder and harder duties just based on how long they've been with the organization - that's one way you get dysfunctional organizations (related to the Peter Principle). If the players can't say e.g. 'okay, we're Lv9, but last time we went up against CR 9 foes it felt pretty shaky, lets just do a CR 5 mission this time', then that's a big hit against them being able to be responsible for their own success and failure.

It doesn’t follow my understanding of rubber-banding either, although I guess I can see where the idea is coming from, that if you have a bunch of easy encounters you will likely follow them up with a harder encounter later and vice versa to maintain the average.

Yes, players do have the opportunity to take on high risk high reward missions and vice versa, although I generally wouldn’t recommend doing it too often.


In 3.x, CR = ECL would be about 20% of the party's resources, on average.

Of course that's not an even fight. CR = [the party's CR], meaning usually ECL+4, would be theoretically an even fight, meaning it likely takes most of your resources if you even survive.

May be completely different in Heart of Darkness though.

Yes. I pretty much learned difficulty from the guidelines in 3E D&D where an average adventuring day would have 4-6 encounters and use up about 80% of party resources, and it has been serving me well for twenty years.


Yet another thread detailing your latest escapades! From the glance I've had, it seems like you're running the same game as ever - oh look, your players have said the same thing. Have you considered just trying to run a simple, on-rails game the way your players seem to want? It's becoming increasingly obvious that there's a huge mismatch between gaming styles at your table. No amount of tweaking the rules of Soulsborne will make it fun if the rest of the table wants Mario.

Not quite, no.

I haven't started a new game yet, and I am trying to address the issues and feedback I got in the last game to make surewe don’t have a repeat.

This is absolutely going to be a simple on the rails game.


I doubt any letter – no matter how perfectly worded – is going to solve this situation.

That said, I am curious... what do they say when you make these arguments in person? Do they straight up not listen to them or do they offer an explanation for their point of view?

Normally they tell a grossly distorted story about something I said or did in the past that makes me look like a hypocrite and then laugh.


Ok, let's see how i as a player would understand this.


a) how you build is actually relevant (good thing)
b) but tanking will not be a viable strategy, don't build for it
Playing enemies smart sounds good. Enemies always targettng weaknesses sounds bad. That reeks of metagaming. If you had written "target weaknesses they know or learn about" that would support the "playing smart" part, but as it is, it sounds as if you play it like a boardgame with enemies as your playing pieces.
superflous. That is something every GM always tries to do anyway. Maybe you mention it because of past trouble.
That means : You are expected to create characters together and build for synergies.
No PC is saved via deus ex machina. But there are no other safety nets either and it might very well be a meatgrinder.
Yeah, it is a meatgrinder. Don't get attached for you will be sorry.
It is a long running group with established dynamics i have to adept to.
No puzzles.
Basic mechanical stuff. Whether thist works depends on how well medium risk/medium reward scenarios go as those will be the mast majority. But nothing particular noteworthy about, in most groups most challanges are appropriate.
If the average mission is intended to deplete most of our ressources, then the average mission and a bit bad luck is a failed mission. You will have many of those. Also, if you can use leftover ressources for downtime hat means, ressources you actually spend on mission make you permanently weaker. The system encourages you to be real stingy while at the same time makes it really hard to win consistently. This will be a very hard and difficult game.
So there is some kind of safety, but using it makes you permanently weaker. But potions and mercenaries sound as if you have to buy/hire them before you actually know you need them. So the safety is not actually in place unless you pay the cost. Sounds like a death spiral on campaign level.
Retreating or shying away from missions that seem too hard is strongly discouraged and comes with penalties beyond just not getting the reward. That one would bother me greatly.
I want you to play like in a roguelike video game. That is the dynamic i aim for. You need to be above average in tactics to succeed and the majority of missions is stuff is so difficult that a nomal adventurer that is not super reckless might ant to pass.

That is nice information, but not really helpful for a new player until they know how long missions last, how heavily the other players optimize or how competent they are.

Seems like your trusted player basically got it.

If something offered me a campaign like that, i would probably give it a pass. Seems too hardcore. Especcially the whole last part basically screams "I have had players before complaining that my game is too hard. Now i am looking for players that want this kind of challenge".


--------------------------------------

On an unrelated note, if all your new players are introduced by your two oldtime players and they are all either cracy or drug addicts, have you ever considered that there might be a realation ? Maybe it is less that your region has only bad players and more that the circles of your friends are not good for recruiting ?
Also, if you have problems with oldtimers poisoning the well, it is very bad to rely on those oldtimers to do your recruitment for you. Every new player will know them better than you and trust them more than you and will have heard their stories about your game.

You mostly got what I was going for, which is weird because you still took away that my goal was to kill characters.

Its not a meat grinder, I don’t expect any character deaths and will be amazed if there are more than one or two. The only reason I am putting in that death is a possibility is that in the last game we were playing with a no PC death house rule and it caused no end of trouble, and I want to make it clear that I am not going to go down that road again.

Tanking is perfectly valid, but you need to give the enemies a reason to attack you. You cant just make a big brick who stands there and expects enemies to come to you, in MMO terms you need to have some way to build threat be that through damage, charisma, lockdown potential, or mobility.

Yes, it is fully possible to have a death spiral. It is also fully possible to have the opposite, a runaway monty haul game where the PCs can simply through money at any challenge to make it go away. In twenty years of gaming, I have managed to thread the needle and not run into either, which is one of the reasons why I am hesitant to drastically alter my games difficulty as some forumites suggest.

And yes, bad luck can push resource expenditure to the point where mission failure is likely or prudent, and I want the PCs to recognize that it is possible due to bad luck without there being someone to blame. Thst being said, the odds are pretty small, less than 5% if previous games have been any indication.

Its not that you will be asked to go on missions only reckless adventurers would ever take, its that adventuring is by its nature a dangerous profession and risk averse people would not take it up. Likewise though, successful adventurers can’t be reckless, they need to act with a bit or tactical and strategic prudence to survive.



Why do you want to run a game that you know your players won't enjoy?

What do you want out of GMing? For me I want to see Heroes battle evil and win, permanently changing the world. I want to see them come across difficult moral choices and solve them, possibly by finding a 3rd option.

For me that means combat difficulty is secondary. I have one player who loves having his PC take permanent damage and wounds, and now only has one arm. My other player just wants a goal to work toward and doesn't want things to change midway through. That does limit my options, but there is still a lot of room to mess around with.

You keep bringing up difficulty. Why? Why is it important for you that the tactical portion of the game is difficult. Again, what do you want out of gming?

What do your players want?

Is there any overlap, or are your desires mutually exclusive?

It is mostly over-lap. The difficulty thing is not a frequent complaint from my players, but people on the forum keep telling me that when my players complain what they are really saying is that the game is too hard.

Normally any given player throws a tantrum about every five sessions, but in a five player group that means an average of one a session, occasionally coinciding to make a true **** storm.

Now, this doesn’t seem too unusual to me, based on my experience playing Monopoly with my brother, Golf with my Dad, cards with my sister in law, Warhammer with guys at the game store, or Warcraft with randos online; people get frustrated when they are losing and look for something to blame and lash out at. But I am told that it is not normal for gaming groups and that I have a problem.

The exact nature of the fit varies, both by person and time, it might be dramatic with shouting and swearing and throwing models, or it might be more subtle with accusations of cheating or favoritism and lots of sarcasm.

Typically the things that trigger it fall into a few categories, although tensions are always higher when the group is struggling than when they are breezing through.

1: Players tend to build their characters around one big thing. When it is prudent to spend money on something that doesn't directly correlate to a bonus to their one thing, they get bitter. When their one thing doesn’t work, they get mad.

2: When a players actions have unintended consequences. Usually this is because they don’t think things through, but often its because they weren’t paying attention, forgot or misunderstood something, failed to do any reconnaissance , or are surprised by something. Some of these fall under miscommunications and “gotchas”, but not the majority.

Composer99
2021-06-14, 01:36 PM
Normally any given player throws a tantrum about every five sessions, but in a five player group that means an average of one a session, occasionally coinciding to make a true **** storm.

Now, this doesn’t seem too unusual to me, based on my experience playing Monopoly with my brother, Golf with my Dad, cards with my sister in law, Warhammer with guys at the game store, or Warcraft with randos online; people get frustrated when they are losing and look for something to blame and lash out at. But I am told that it is not normal for gaming groups and that I have a problem.

The exact nature of the fit varies, both by person and time, it might be dramatic with shouting and swearing and throwing models, or it might be more subtle with accusations of cheating or favoritism and lots of sarcasm.



So, I mean, yes, it's normal for people to get grumpy when things go bad in a game, especially a competitive one. If I'm on a 10-game losing streak in Hearthstone I can get crusty. It's among several reasons why I stopped playing. Although, in fairness, some swearing and the odd thrown pen when I'm sitting by myself bothering no real person is pretty harmless.

What is not normal is someone taking out a "ton of misdirected anger" on folks at the gaming table. Yes, sure, people have stuff going on in their lives that can make them angry, but it's on them to find ways to cope with it that don't involve getting your gaming table mixed up in it.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-06-14, 02:56 PM
Normally any given player throws a tantrum about every five sessions, but in a five player group that means an average of one a session, occasionally coinciding to make a true **** storm.

Now, this doesn’t seem too unusual to me, based on my experience playing Monopoly with my brother, Golf with my Dad, cards with my sister in law, Warhammer with guys at the game store, or Warcraft with randos online; people get frustrated when they are losing and look for something to blame and lash out at. But I am told that it is not normal for gaming groups and that I have a problem.


I want to stress upfront that I do not consider myself a paragon of DMs. That said...

I have run ~20 groups over the last 6 years ranging from one-shots to year+ campaigns with a variety of people, mostly strangers, with a range of experience from grognards to players brand new to fantasy, let alone RPGs, let alone TTRPGs.

I have yet to have anything that I could even with the faintest plausibility describe as a "tantrum". I would consider "someone throwing a tantrum" to be immediate grounds to either
1) boot the player permanently (if the rest of the group agreed).
2) end the campaign then and there and refuse to play with any of those players again (if the rest of the group thought it was normal).

If they were friends, they'd not be so after throwing a tantrum about a TTRPG. I refuse to hang out with people like that. If they're family, well, they're family, but I won't play any more games with them of any kind until they've grown up[1].

I've had a couple people drop from campaigns for non-IRL concerns, but those were amicable style differences. I've had people question my decisions/rulings, but done in an amicable manner with the full understanding that the outcome was being sought in the best interests of the group on all sides. I've had to leave one group because their style was incompatible with mine. That's it. And I've played with some seriously competitive people. And lots and lots of teenagers and pre-teens (ranging from age 7 through 18)--I'd say the median age of my players was ~15.

And I'd say that goes for any game--if you're throwing a tantrum when you lose, I don't want to have anything to do with you. And even worse, TTRPGs aren't supposed to be about winning or losing.

[1] my age-based cut-off here is 4-5 max. Before that, throwing a tantrum means immediate consequences. After that? I will not play or run games with you involved until you've shown you've changed.

Grod_The_Giant
2021-06-14, 04:56 PM
The more I think about this, the more I start to think that the problem isn't that the game is challenging, it's that it's challenging the wrong people.

Builds, tactics, consequences, resource management, problem solving--that's all stuff that challenges the player. It means that you, as a person, have to stop and think about what you're doing. And for a lot of us it's the best thing about tabletop RPGs.

But not, it sounds like, for your players. For whatever reason, they don't want to find themselves in situations where there's a wrong choice. They want to roll dice and use their special abilities; they want to enjoy the worlds you come up with; and they don't want to have to worry about anything while they do.

That can be frustrating. Normally I'd say run a very linear adventure, but given that they also seem to have emotional issues and a phobia of "railroading," I'm not sure entirely what you can do. But the more you talk about planning ahead and facing consequences, the more miserable they're going to be.

Tl;dr: You want the players to put more brainpower into the game then they're willing to devote to a game.

NichG
2021-06-14, 07:22 PM
It doesn’t follow my understanding of rubber-banding either, although I guess I can see where the idea is coming from, that if you have a bunch of easy encounters you will likely follow them up with a harder encounter later and vice versa to maintain the average.

Yes, players do have the opportunity to take on high risk high reward missions and vice versa, although I generally wouldn’t recommend doing it too often.


Why wouldn't you recommend it?

Let's say someone is a guard in a small town. They might have to deal with breaking up bar brawls and arguments as their daily job, with chasing a murderer or thief or dealing with local bandits as the biggest challenges (let's say CR5 at worst). They start the job as a level 3 character and advance to level 6 over the course of a decade on the job. Is it infeasible in your setting for such a person to just continue to deal with small town threats for the rest of their lives without e.g. automatically taking a promotion to city guard and taking on a CR9 thieves guild or defending the city from dragons or something?

If an NPC can stay in a post where they're consistently overpowering the challenges they're expected to deal with as part of their job, is there a reason PCs can't?

Note: "I don't want to run a game about that" is valid, but that's the sort of thing you have to be direct about with players. If you try to make it so that even if the PCs want to be like that they can't, that's going to make the whole 'you have choices and responsibility for their consequences' thing fall flat.

Cluedrew
2021-06-14, 07:31 PM
Normally any given player throws a tantrum about every five sessions, but in a five player group that means an average of one a session, occasionally coinciding to make a true **** storm.That seems to be on par with what I get when I'm running activities for 8-10 year old children. Outside of that I've had someone yell at me for dodging around their army in a war game (first time in half a dozen matches they hadn't seem-rolled me), I have been accused of having a tantrum for stating "well, I won't be having fun for the rest of the game" before quietly playing out the last few rounds as to not throw off the balance of the game and once I actually had a tantrum. I apologized for it and have never played that game again, actually I've been pretty careful with the whole genre ever since.

Oh I just remembered a fourth, that one was complicated. Depending on how many I've forgotten then rate might be between one every five months to one every five years. So yeah, one every five sessions seems on the high side to me.

Talakeal
2021-06-14, 08:25 PM
Why wouldn't you recommend it?

Let's say someone is a guard in a small town. They might have to deal with breaking up bar brawls and arguments as their daily job, with chasing a murderer or thief or dealing with local bandits as the biggest challenges (let's say CR5 at worst). They start the job as a level 3 character and advance to level 6 over the course of a decade on the job. Is it infeasible in your setting for such a person to just continue to deal with small town threats for the rest of their lives without e.g. automatically taking a promotion to city guard and taking on a CR9 thieves guild or defending the city from dragons or something?

If an NPC can stay in a post where they're consistently overpowering the challenges they're expected to deal with as part of their job, is there a reason PCs can't?

Note: "I don't want to run a game about that" is valid, but that's the sort of thing you have to be direct about with players. If you try to make it so that even if the PCs want to be like that they can't, that's going to make the whole 'you have choices and responsibility for their consequences' thing fall flat.

I suppose if you agree to play a quiet low stakes campaign that would work fine.

I was thinking in a more traditional structure where the players are trying to amass as much money and power as possible for the sake of saving the world or whatnot.

The NPC bouncer isn’t amassing Experience iance and treasure at the same rate as someone pushing themselves, which is fine, but if a dragon or evil overlord or whatever threatens his home, he won’t really be able to do too much about it compared to your average commoner.

In game terms, if you take on to many low stakes missions you will fall behind in treasure, while if you take on too many high stakes missions you will probably test your luck too often and die, neither one of which is great if you have grand goals or the GM has some sort of epic plot.

NichG
2021-06-14, 08:35 PM
I suppose if you agree to play a quiet low stakes campaign that would work fine.

I was thinking in a more traditional structure where the players are trying to amass as much money and power as possible for the sake of saving the world or whatnot.

The NPC bouncer isn’t amassing Experience iance and treasure at the same rate as someone pushing themselves, which is fine, but if a dragon or evil overlord or whatever threatens his home, he won’t really be able to do too much about it compared to your average commoner.

In game terms, if you take on to many low stakes missions you will fall behind in treasure, while if you take on too many high stakes missions you will probably test your luck too often and die, neither one of which is great if you have grand goals or the GM has some sort of epic plot.

Well, this is sort of what I'm getting at. What does 'falling behind' mean really, if players actually do have full agency over their characters? If you want to tell people 'succeed or fail, its up to you and your decisions' but you also say 'oh, you must be Lv20 before two years pass in-game or the elder evil that is coming later in my plotline will kill you all', those two things don't really go together very well.

You could say for example 'In two years, there's going to be a very high level threat. If you guys are powerful enough to face it, game will center around directly resisting it, but if you're not strong enough to do so then there's an alternate way forward that involves being on the run and building up a way to escape. So it's up to you which game you'd rather play', which would leave the players the agency to make either choice on the basis of the expected consequences. But that's different than e.g. 'every four sessions, the CR of opponents you are expected to be able to directly face will go up by 1, and you can't avoid those conflicts'.

Pauly
2021-06-14, 09:51 PM
After reading a bit more in the thread, I think what Talakeal wants is to make the social contract of the game explicit.

Going back to my previous post I would further suggest something along the lines of creating a single page document to cover the 3 main interactions DM to player, player to DM and player to player.


Part A
My promise as a DM to the players
1 -8) ennumerated points.
9, 10) left blank so the players can add additional promises they think are necessary

Part B
The DM’s expectations of the players
1 - N) ennumerated points about how Talakeal expects his players to behave. Be active, don’t wait for spoon feeding, work together as a group, remember plot hooks etc.
N + 1) left blank for the players to add points as they think are necessary.

Part C
Player’s expectations of each other.
1) Be respectful of each other
2+) left blank to allow the players to complete.


Then do not present this document as a fait accompli. Give the players the agency to amend/clarify the document and negotiate a mutually agreeable social contract.

Don’t try to enforce the contract. This is more of a expectation setting exercise. Also by allowing them the agency to alter the document it gives them investment into following through on their part of it.

RandomPeasant
2021-06-14, 09:55 PM
I honestly think that if you're planning out what will happen in two years in-game, you're probably over-prepping regardless of what those plans are. The hardest part of DMing is writing only as much plot and setting material as is necessary for the game, or detaching yourself sufficiently from the excess material you've prepared that you don't railroad the players into it when they go a different direction.


neither one of which is great if you have grand goals or the GM has some sort of epic plot.

The GM having an epic plot is in direct conflict with player agency. Any time you plan out in advance what is going to happen, you are butting up against the ability of the PCs to do something else. That might be fine, as the success of adventure paths quite clearly demonstrates, but for players to have agency the plot needs to be something that happens as a result of their actions.

KineticDiplomat
2021-06-14, 10:12 PM
As a last note before I beg off:

The players being emotionally immature and the GM being capricious and all-powerful are not mutually exclusive positions. Add on that mechanics can be easily used to rationalize why either side is right in both cases, and the supposed objectivity of the rules is not really a balancing factor. I dare say it’s likely that everyone in the situation here is tragically right.

We have a GM who is personally very heavily invested in his homebrew D&D mod providing a certain experience. He has, in several threads to date, not once had someone point out a possible system issue without a response as to why the poster is wrong and his system actually covers that and it’s not a problem. I imagine this is his attitude towards any system complaints his players have.

Add to that the GM is, by virtue of being the author of a homebrew, the only person in the world who is probably in any way proficient with the mechanics to the level “normal” mainstream systems might expect. Yet he is terrified of “nerfing the campaign” so much that he openly states his intent to play the NPCs as a wargame (if Aragorn doesn’t have a bow, all of the orcs will use their cyber-ork hive mind to kite him exactly X feet and shoot him with their bows) while his players are four disparate individuals, and despite there being the same Magic/Damage/Move combat puzzles as D&D wants his players to know that any weakness in this system - which again, he’s the only one who actually knows well enough to game - will get exploited by something so they better get it right or face the consequences.

And then we have his history where in umpteen scenarios not once have his players been competent - aka done what he thought was reasonable - despite whatever hint/agency/vision/hook he gave them, they have 100% of the time over a large sample size of events always done the “wrong thing” for which of course they had to suffer.

Safe to say, if his players think he’s a capricious killer GM who responds to perceived offenses against his own personal vision of his personally designed system experience by punishing them, yep, they’re probably right.

At the same time, if even a fraction of the events he’s reported are accurate - and with all single source reports about extraordinarily circumstances we always have to consider that the reporting source is misrepresenting the situation - then the players are man-children (or possibly really children) for whom no GM or system would work.

———

So, no reason both parties can’t be deep in the wrong here, but almost no likelihood an “open letter” - which in this day and age is almost always an attacking argument no matter how framed - is going to solve it.

Talakeal
2021-06-14, 10:54 PM
As a last note before I beg off:

The players being emotionally immature and the GM being capricious and all-powerful are not mutually exclusive positions. Add on that mechanics can be easily used to rationalize why either side is right in both cases, and the supposed objectivity of the rules is not really a balancing factor. I dare say it’s likely that everyone in the situation here is tragically right.

We have a GM who is personally very heavily invested in his homebrew D&D mod providing a certain experience. He has, in several threads to date, not once had someone point out a possible system issue without a response as to why the poster is wrong and his system actually covers that and it’s not a problem. I imagine this is his attitude towards any system complaints his players have.

Add to that the GM is, by virtue of being the author of a homebrew, the only person in the world who is probably in any way proficient with the mechanics to the level “normal” mainstream systems might expect. Yet he is terrified of “nerfing the campaign” so much that he openly states his intent to play the NPCs as a wargame (if Aragorn doesn’t have a bow, all of the orcs will use their cyber-ork hive mind to kite him exactly X feet and shoot him with their bows) while his players are four disparate individuals, and despite there being the same Magic/Damage/Move combat puzzles as D&D wants his players to know that any weakness in this system - which again, he’s the only one who actually knows well enough to game - will get exploited by something so they better get it right or face the consequences.

And then we have his history where in umpteen scenarios not once have his players been competent - aka done what he thought was reasonable - despite whatever hint/agency/vision/hook he gave them, they have 100% of the time over a large sample size of events always done the “wrong thing” for which of course they had to suffer.

Safe to say, if his players think he’s a capricious killer GM who responds to perceived offenses against his own personal vision of his personally designed system experience by punishing them, yep, they’re probably right.

At the same time, if even a fraction of the events he’s reported are accurate - and with all single source reports about extraordinarily circumstances we always have to consider that the reporting source is misrepresenting the situation - then the players are man-children (or possibly really children) for whom no GM or system would work.

———

So, no reason both parties can’t be deep in the wrong here, but almost no likelihood an “open letter” - which in this day and age is almost always an attacking argument no matter how framed - is going to solve it.

While nothing you are saying is wholly off base, please note that you are drawing conclusions from the most extreme examples. There have been literally hundreds of times my players worked together competently, that I have changed my rules based on feedback, and that we all had enjoyable games together.

But of course good times don’t make for long forum threads.

I will say though, I don't think I would be getting all the complaints about rubber banding in the recent threads if I actually played monsters as perfectly efficient hive minds.

Quertus
2021-06-15, 02:22 AM
To circle back to something I said earlier: Talakeal, if you want to give your players Agency, a good place to start is to place control of when the rules change in their hands.

IIRC, you said that 1 player wants to change things a lot, but that the group thinks that you change things too much. So, pick someone else to determine (or, probably less good, determine by group vote) when the rules should change to address an issue vs when they should remain as they are for this campaign.

This will both show that you are listening and trying to improve, and *force* you to listen to the tempo they set / what they think is worthy of rules changes // will encourage you to ask questions and try to understand why they wanted the rules changes in some instances but not others - very important feedback for testing your system!


Previously you had various suggestions about showing the players the monster stats, or hand them a copy of the adventure after the fact, etc.

Ah, so I did. In the past. Thanks for jogging my senile memory. :smallbiggrin: :smallredface:


I have longer responses for Quertus and Old Trees, but I don’t have time to type out or edit them right now, stay tuned.

I look forward to it. (It took a while to write this (I was busy), it might already be there)


I will say that, as for the vampire, its not that there was any misunderstanding going on. The players spotted the clue, mentioned it, and then never a ted upon it, and when I later asked them why, they told me that they forgot and it should have been my job to remind them.

That… seems a really strange expectation. Did you correct them / ask them why they believed this… or just ignore it?


Yes, players do have the opportunity to take on high risk high reward missions and vice versa, although I generally wouldn’t recommend doing it too often.

Why wouldn't you recommend them taking on a larger number of low-risk, low-reward missions?

EDIT: ah, I see that you half answered that, with "because the Doom clock is counting down". So… what if the Doom clock doesn't start counting down until *they* can start it, at… say, level 17? Or what if they can handle those low-risk missions *faster*, and level up at the same speed as (or possibly even faster than) if they had taken on higher risk missions? Any reason for them not to go that route if that's what they enjoy? Any reason for you to not build your game such that they can enjoy it?


This is absolutely going to be a simple on the rails game.

Good to know. Not what I expected when you said "Agency". But, now that I know, as long as you get player buy-in, I can try to give you appropriate advice.

On the plus side, a linear "rails" game is ideal for my "boxed text" idea. :smallwink:


Yes, it is fully possible to have a death spiral. It is also fully possible to have the opposite, a runaway monty haul game where the PCs can simply through money at any challenge to make it go away. In twenty years of gaming, I have managed to thread the needle and not run into either, which is one of the reasons why I am hesitant to drastically alter my games difficulty as some forumites suggest.

Your posts have repeatedly indicated that that is what your players desire, so I have suggested that you give that a try.

That said, my "demigods of adventure" idea explicitly does *not* lower the difficulty, only increases the stamina of the PCs, to allow you to test one component of "difficulty", to see how that affects your players' behavior (specifically, their desire to rest after every encounter), and, if it helps make the game more in accordance with your desires for heroic play, to calibrate your encounters and/or system accordingly. But, arguably more importantly, to facilitate having that conversation with your players.

It explicitly does *not* change how you would "thread that needle", does not produce "a runaway monty haul game" (unless your system mandates periodic >100% resource expenditure to prevent such, which would be… odd); if you have taken that away, then you have misunderstood the concept, and should ask questions until you understand it better.


And yes, bad luck can push resource expenditure to the point where mission failure is likely or prudent, and I want the PCs to recognize that it is possible due to bad luck without there being someone to blame. Thst being said, the odds are pretty small, less than 5% if previous games have been any indication.

How many "missions" does your standard campaign entail?

How many missions do your players usually fail for *other* reasons?


It is mostly over-lap. The difficulty thing is not a frequent complaint from my players, but people on the forum keep telling me that when my players complain what they are really saying is that the game is too hard.

This may be a you (Talakeal) communication thing - anyone not posting from a phone care to show Talakeal examples from their posts that feed this belief / *really* sound like Talakeal saying exactly that?


Normally any given player throws a tantrum about every five sessions, but in a five player group that means an average of one a session, occasionally coinciding to make a true **** storm.

Now, this doesn’t seem too unusual to me, based on my experience playing Monopoly with my brother, Golf with my Dad, cards with my sister in law, Warhammer with guys at the game store, or Warcraft with randos online; people get frustrated when they are losing and look for something to blame and lash out at. But I am told that it is not normal for gaming groups and that I have a problem.

The exact nature of the fit varies, both by person and time, it might be dramatic with shouting and swearing and throwing models, or it might be more subtle with accusations of cheating or favoritism and lots of sarcasm.

1) no, that's really *not* normal in… heck, not just RPGs, but even board / card games with well-adjusted, sober adults, in my rather extensive experience. If you're playing for money, and you've just bet the house, your wife, and your 2.5 kids? Sure. Otherwise, not so much. Environments where such overreaction is common are referred to as "toxic" - often, by its own members (I'm looking at you, League of Legends)!

(EDIT: upon reflection, I realize that I have seen slightly similar behavior from individuals regarding things which are their "passions", and disturbingly similar behavior from disempowered sports fans, whose interactions are limited watching and yelling ineffectually at the game. Although I don't exactly condone such behavior, and consider it childish, these groups aren't generally labeled "toxic". Anyway, I know that this is gonna be really strange advice, but have you considered trying to get your players to be *less* invested in your games?)

I don't know how else to emphasize my concerns about your group without it coming off like I'm attacking you (yeah, I'm bad at communication, too - I'm glad that you are understanding of my communication failures), but I strongly agreed with Segev when they said that you apologizing was a strange play in that scenario (I'll try and find the quotes if you don't know what I'm referring to).

2) now, this might just be me, but I view the "more subtle" things, like sarcasm, as a desperate attempt to communicate to you, by engaging you in every possible bandwidth in the hope that *something* will get through. Because, from what I've heard, it sounds like that's actually been one of the most effective forms if communication from some of your players. Which is part of why I keep encouraging you to listen to your players more (not that it's not good advice in general, but… it's a bad sign when your players feel that they need to resort to sarcasm for you to hear them). So you'll probably enjoy the game more of you can find a way for them to communicate with you more directly, rather than resorting to sarcasm and personal attacks.

3) we aren't at your table - you are. It occurs to me as I write this that what you choose to address, and when and how you choose to address it, may be one of your most powerful weapons to change how toxic your table is.

A lot of your decisions of when and how to change rules, of what player feedback to listen to, of how to respond, I would have chosen very differently. "Building a table culture" is… Hmmm… complex, and highly affected by such choices.


Typically the things that trigger it fall into a few categories, although tensions are always higher when the group is struggling than when they are breezing through.

1: Players tend to build their characters around one big thing. When it is prudent to spend money on something that doesn't directly correlate to a bonus to their one thing, they get bitter. When their one thing doesn’t work, they get mad.

2: When a players actions have unintended consequences. Usually this is because they don’t think things through, but often its because they weren’t paying attention, forgot or misunderstood something, failed to do any reconnaissance , or are surprised by something. Some of these fall under miscommunications and “gotchas”, but not the majority.


The more I think about this, the more I start to think that the problem isn't that the game is challenging, it's that it's challenging the wrong people.

Builds, tactics, consequences, resource management, problem solving--that's all stuff that challenges the player. It means that you, as a person, have to stop and think about what you're doing. And for a lot of us it's the best thing about tabletop RPGs.

But not, it sounds like, for your players. For whatever reason, they don't want to find themselves in situations where there's a wrong choice. They want to roll dice and use their special abilities; they want to enjoy the worlds you come up with; and they don't want to have to worry about anything while they do.

That can be frustrating. Normally I'd say run a very linear adventure, but given that they also seem to have emotional issues and a phobia of "railroading," I'm not sure entirely what you can do. But the more you talk about planning ahead and facing consequences, the more miserable they're going to be.

Tl;dr: You want the players to put more brainpower into the game then they're willing to devote to a game.

How does one… have this conversation / fix this kind of problem? "You seem to want to build characters with only one button to push; to maximize that button, and then get frustrated when that button is inapplicable"?

What solutions could be on the table?

Changing the system such that a lightning-throwing healing Cleric - something with multiple buttons to push - is actually a viable build?

Ensuring that every button is always valid to push?

Making buttons obviously overkill after a certain point, "anything you can sword dies in one hit", where it's obvious that they should improve something else now?

*Increasing* the number of "cannot be affected by <button>" encounters?

Creating complex encounters, with many components, *some* of which <button> is inapplicable, *some* of which it works on? Where either it's fine to only have a single button, or the impetus for multiple buttons comes from wanting to participate in a different component of the encounter.

Tailoring encounters to the PCs?

Verbal clue-by-four approach ("you… want to take your Pyromancer Wizard… to an area doubtless rife with fire-immune creatures? Are you *sure*?”) (note: doesn't work so well in linear adventures, where the GM picks the path)

Incentivized multiple buttons, by… reducing costs on "secondary buttons" (whether build resources or cheaper potions), handing out items of "secondary buttons" (your classic "wand of fireballs" / "flaming sword" to give the party firepower(heh), or increased drops of potions)?

*Forcing* multiple buttons, by… making downtime always improve *2+* things / making all characters "gestalt" / Fate skill trees?

I'm kinda at a loss, because I've not seen players build one-note characters before without acknowledging the consequences of such choices, *unless* they were *forced* to make such characters by a system that they subsequently hated as mandating trap options.

… "failed to do any recon" really stands out to me. It feels like this… is a "one of these things is not like the others" scenario, *and* low-hanging fruit, and really should be addressed.

Talakeal, did you ask your players why they didn't do recon? If so, what was their response?

Vahnavoi
2021-06-15, 05:22 AM
Staying away from Talakeal's particular situation because it has enough people talking about.

On a more general level: the difficulty of making players recognize their own agency is that it has to happen from a situation where they don't believe or don't realize they have agency.

At length:

Agency is the amount of meaningful moves a player can make in a game, "meaningful" meaning change in a game state. It's a number that starts from zero and can go up without limit. Related, there's total game agency and turn-by-turn agency. Total game agency is delimited by total number of meaningful moves a player can make in an entire game - a number that's uncountable or even infinite in case of many tabletop roleplaying games. Turn-by-turn agency is the amount of moves a player can choose from per each decision prompt and by contrast is much smaller than total agency and often goes up and down depending on exact game state.

You can run a functional roleplaying game where turn-by-turn agency is two - that is, the player answers a series of yes/no of questions, or some other binary choice. Where at least some of the choices diverge, the move space and hence total agency of the player grows exponentially. If at least some choices continue to diverge without limit, such a game can have arbitrarily high total agency.

The maximum is harder to define, but one thing that delimits it is human working memory. Humans have limited storage-specific capacity for keeping things in mind, slightly varying from person to person. There are process-specific ways to apparently increase this, but those rely on a person learning and utilizing memory devices. In practical terms, you can expect a new player to consider and choose from around three different moves, and processing and choosing from more than those requires experience and special rules knowledge. More than three moves is prone to causing decision paralysis or just failure to see non-obvious moves.

So how does a player recognize their agency? You'd think it's just a matter of looking at the game rules, right? In theory, yes, but that's the first hick-up: people who just look at the rules (especially the first time) often can't deduce which moves are meaningful and which are not, because roleplaying games typically don't offer complete information to players. In other words, they don't recognize their agency - they assume agency.

The second hick-up is that tabletop games require other people to process the game moves - a game master being the most obvious, though it's still true of games without such a role. In short: nothing actually happens in the game without approval and instantation by those other people, so those other people serve as convenient scapegoats for anything and everything in the game. It doesn't help that tabletop games are often full of pseudo-agency - moves that sound meaningful, that could conceivably meaningful, yet aren't meaningful because no-one pays attention to them. Then there's fake agency - situations where other people purport to give you a choice, but never intent for that choice to matter. Because a player can't turn back time or pick apart source code of other people's brains to check how they operate, a player can hence claim all agency in a game is pseudo or fake, and it is difficult to prove them wrong.

So to get a player to recognize their agency you have to get past at least these hick-ups: they have to stop assuming their choices matter and they have to stop assuming their choices don't matter just because another person is required to instate them. Actually have them count their moves and what projected outcome those moves have. It is expected a lot of moves converge in the same space - that is, either nothing happens or the game is lost. In a game of incomplete information, some amount of trial and error is also expected, which requires willingness to return to the start state and try again. Often, recognizing agency feels the same as figuring out the solution(s) of a difficult puzzle. (It often literally is solving a puzzle.) It is very hard to get this to happen in an unwilling or incapable person - a situation described by the saying "you can lead a horse to the water but you can't make it drink" .

GloatingSwine
2021-06-15, 07:47 AM
To use an actual story, one time the villain was a doppleganger impersonating a vampire. I dropped numerous hints, and at one point after describing the vampire's reflection, one of the players corrected me, thinking I had made a mistake, to which I informed him that while his character knows vampires don't have reflections, this one does..

Which is fine, if you never use homebrew monsters that mostly resemble normal monsters but are actually different with unexepcted capabilities.

But you do do that. You make super-sneeze ogres and magic unkillable guardians.

So the players have absolutely no way to tell the difference between a by-the-book Doppelganger pretending to be a vampire and a wacky Takaleal vampire that has a reflection for some reason that is going to kick them in the ass in five minutes.

You don't need to give them hints that it isn't a vampire, you need to give them at least three really obvious hints that it definitely is a Doppelganger.

Batcathat
2021-06-15, 08:07 AM
Which is fine, if you never use homebrew monsters that mostly resemble normal monsters but are actually different with unexepcted capabilities.

But you do do that. You make super-sneeze ogres and magic unkillable guardians.

So the players have absolutely no way to tell the difference between a by-the-book Doppelganger pretending to be a vampire and a wacky Takaleal vampire that has a reflection for some reason that is going to kick them in the ass in five minutes.

You don't need to give them hints that it isn't a vampire, you need to give them at least three really obvious hints that it definitely is a Doppelganger.

I don't know about this. I feel like a fairly obvious hint that the supposed vampire is displaying some distinctly non-vampiric traits should at the very least be a reason – both in and out of character – to consider the reason for that. Even if it is some sort of wacky homebrew vampire, it's still worth looking into just in case it comes with some wacky homebrew powers.

That said, giving players clues that are just the right degree of understandable is always tough. They can miss things the GM thinks is blatantly obvious while simultaneously latching onto some tiny clue the GM just meant as foreshadowing.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-15, 08:15 AM
A bigger problem is that "vampire" itself is a vague term due to all the different kinds of vampires in myth and fiction. Same is true for most popular monsters - without something in the game itself establishing beyond doubt that some traits are ironclad for that kind of monster, it's impossible to use them for guessing games.

Quertus
2021-06-15, 11:53 AM
Which is fine, if you never use homebrew monsters that mostly resemble normal monsters but are actually different with unexepcted capabilities.

But you do do that. You make super-sneeze ogres and magic unkillable guardians.

So the players have absolutely no way to tell the difference between a by-the-book Doppelganger pretending to be a vampire and a wacky Takaleal vampire that has a reflection for some reason that is going to kick them in the ass in five minutes.

You don't need to give them hints that it isn't a vampire, you need to give them at least three really obvious hints that it definitely is a Doppelganger.

This is a really good point: if I had been at Talakeal's table, I likey would have responded to this incongruous information with, "oh, cool, more homebrew puzzle monsters!". And either not given it a second thought, or began attempting to collect samples to perform alchemical experiments upon in order to determine the creature's variant capabilities before the inevitable confrontation.

Talakeal, this was a brilliant scenario, hindered by the combination of "your players¹" and "your history of homebrew".

Would you consider giving your PCs a "homebrew detector" for the next few campaigns, to build up a combination of "trust" and (if possible) "critical thinking skills"? Flavor it as a "foo" detector, where all your cool homebrew monsters are foo (whether that's fey/Dream, or Chaos, or æther-touched, or whatever). That way, they know when to look inside the box for answers, and when to think outside the box, at least. Then we can focus on building those two skill sets, rather than on getting your players to distinguish between them (and scream at you for "cheating" when they fail).

¹ I can't say much there, because i have numerous players, and several entire groups, whose only response would be, "what Knowledge do I need to roll to understand this?"


I don't know about this. I feel like a fairly obvious hint that the supposed vampire is displaying some distinctly non-vampiric traits should at the very least be a reason – both in and out of character – to consider the reason for that. Even if it is some sort of wacky homebrew vampire, it's still worth looking into just in case it comes with some wacky homebrew powers.

That said, giving players clues that are just the right degree of understandable is always tough. They can miss things the GM thinks is blatantly obvious while simultaneously latching onto some tiny clue the GM just meant as foreshadowing.

For me as a player? Yes, absolutely! But Talakeal's players don't seem inclined to do the necessary amount of research to understand a problem.

Given this limitation, what would you suggest? Do you think a "strike that: R&R - Research and Recon - are the biggest min-maxing / optimization things you can do in Heart of Darkness; teamwork weighs in after those" would encourage Talakeal's players towards critical evaluation of their opposition?


A bigger problem is that "vampire" itself is a vague term due to all the different kinds of vampires in myth and fiction. Same is true for most popular monsters - without something in the game itself establishing beyond doubt that some traits are ironclad for that kind of monster, it's impossible to use them for guessing games.

Also true. If we don't know what lore a 'Heart of Darkness" vampire is based on, we cannot recognize this as anomalous in the first place.

Talakeal
2021-06-15, 12:27 PM
Which is fine, if you never use homebrew monsters that mostly resemble normal monsters but are actually different with unexepcted capabilities.

But you do do that. You make super-sneeze ogres and magic unkillable guardians.

So the players have absolutely no way to tell the difference between a by-the-book Doppelganger pretending to be a vampire and a wacky Takaleal vampire that has a reflection for some reason that is going to kick them in the ass in five minutes.

You don't need to give them hints that it isn't a vampire, you need to give them at least three really obvious hints that it definitely is a Doppelganger.

Thank you for being honest. For years I have suspected that the whole “gotcha” thing was just code for saying DMs shouldn’t be allowed to home-brew content, but everyone else always denies it.

That being said, three things:

1: It wasn’t a super anything, let alone an ogre. It was a nerfed fomorian who dealt non-lethal damage.
2: There was no home-brew at all in The game with a vampire, it was a prefab 3.5 module.
3: The issue was t that they didn't catch the clue, they did and meant to act on it, but then forgot all about it and said it was my job to remind them.




I honestly think that if you're planning out what will happen in two years in-game, you're probably over-prepping regardless of what those plans are. The hardest part of DMing is writing only as much plot and setting material as is necessary for the game, or detaching yourself sufficiently from the excess material you've prepared that you don't railroad the players into it when they go a different direction.



The GM having an epic plot is in direct conflict with player agency. Any time you plan out in advance what is going to happen, you are butting up against the ability of the PCs to do something else. That might be fine, as the success of adventure paths quite clearly demonstrates, but for players to have agency the plot needs to be something that happens as a result of their actions.

I don't think having a plot hurts player agency in any meaningful way, as long as you let the players interact with the plot in their own way rather than following a script.

I dont think anyone would have fun if i just tossed the players into a sandbox and told them to make their own plot.

To use an analogy, I love customization options in games, so one of my friends was surprised I don't like games with a bunch of sliders that let you build a character from scratch. I told him that callingsliders customization options is like saying Home Depot is the world’s largest furniture store.


Well, this is sort of what I'm getting at. What does 'falling behind' mean really, if players actually do have full agency over their characters? If you want to tell people 'succeed or fail, its up to you and your decisions' but you also say 'oh, you must be Lv20 before two years pass in-game or the elder evil that is coming later in my plotline will kill you all', those two things don't really go together very well.

You could say for example 'In two years, there's going to be a very high level threat. If you guys are powerful enough to face it, game will center around directly resisting it, but if you're not strong enough to do so then there's an alternate way forward that involves being on the run and building up a way to escape. So it's up to you which game you'd rather play', which would leave the players the agency to make either choice on the basis of the expected consequences. But that's different than e.g. 'every four sessions, the CR of opponents you are expected to be able to directly face will go up by 1, and you can't avoid those conflicts'.

In my experience, player characters want to amass as much money and power as possible. They also usually have some sort of epic goal that requires a lot of power, whether or not it is their idea or based on the DMs plot. Even something as simple as keeping your family safe in a dangerous world of pillaging orcs and marauding dragons can require a lot of personal power and magic swag.

So yeah, its possible to play an alternate game where those assumptions aren't true, but I haven’t really talked to anyone who is interested in challenging that sort of model, and didn't really think about it whent talking about power curves.

Talakeal
2021-06-15, 03:27 PM
@: Old Trees:

A few people have flat out said "do not show them this letter", Pex for one. But, in context, most of them are saying that I should just not send this particular letter, that the concept or the bullet points are fine. A few more poeple, not all of them on the forum, have asked me if any letter could possibly make someone start acting more mature, or if it was even appropriate to try. Further that with the idea that everyone is primed to read the letter in the worst light possible, and I think the odds are it would only make things worse.

For example, multiple people are reading the bits about enemies playing smart and exploiting weaknesses to mean I am playing to win and will meta-game and make the enemies omniscient, genius, hive minds to perfectly exploit the PCs weaknesses, when really I am talking about things like (examples from last campaign) a flying, fire-breathing dragon testing the party's defenses from the air before landing and wading into melee, or a muscular hobgoblin seeing a tiny frail wizard blowing his comrades apart with fireballs from a staff and deciding to try wrestling the staff away from her.


I am not opposed to Quertus' idea about showing the players my notes afterwards, although I do fear that if the players discover a mistake on my part (likely a math error or forgetting to write something down) it will backfire and only fuel their convictions that I am cheating.


I am willing to admit that I make mistakes and that I do share part of the blame when things go bad, I am not that arrogant. However, the players need to realize that I am not the sole factor in determining their success of failure.


The example of a lightning weak monster who is immune to fire and cold is just something I pulled out of my butt, but isn't too similar to a D&D golem. Assume they can't find out more because they failed their knowledge: arcana check and we are playing D&D RAW.

@Quertus:

Sorry, I don't have the time to quote everything I am responding to, let me know if I need to clarify context.


Two of my players are diagnosed with depression, which is known to hinder memory formation. All of my players tune out when they aren't the center of attention and spend half the game playing with their phones. As a result, they have decided it is my job to remind them every time they forget something. Of course, most of the time I don't know when or what they have forgotten, and I don't know how to be sublte about reminding them so it doesn't just look like I am ordering them about using word of god and further eroding their sense of maturity / responsibility / agency / accountability or whatever you want to call it.


Is the example of the healing / lightning throwing cleric specifically referring to the character I had two campaigns ago? Because, he was ALSO trying to be the party face and a martial artist, in a party which already had a martial artist, which is just too much for one person to take on (in a normal size group, it might be good in a smaller or larger party). A character who sticks to two or three roles is generally perfectly competent.


I imagine my players would be a lot better served if they weren't so uptight / perfectionist about the game. Basically, they don't want to have to be "on" all the time, but at the same time they freak out if they don't get every single objective and their character never fails or gets hurt. If they want to chill out and be more casual, that's cool, but they can't also be so uptight and on edge.


Boxed text is hard. My players have a standing policy of ignoring it, and I am not sure I could find enough people willing to go through it all to make sure it can't be twisted or misinterpreted. But, I can't do boxed text for everything, what all is it needed for? How should I start?



I am not sure what you mean by "razor's edge" balance, as I don't really balance that tightly. I only go for averages, trying to balance a specific instance is impossible. But its weird, anytime my players fail they immediately assume its because it "wasn't balanced".


I generally run about 20 missions in a campaign over about 18 months of play. In that time, I generally see 1 or 2 failed missions. So yeah, maybe 2-3% fail for other reasons? Although my last group seems very risk averse, and so they probably would have abandoned several that were perfectly winnable.


The new campaign is going to be totally by the book. Any printed optional rules can be voted on by the group. Now, I still need to be able to fix mistakes and game-breaking exploits; there isn't really a right answer there. If I can go off on a story, one time a player found a game-breaking exploit, and I said we needed to remove it, the party voted to keep it, so I had the enemies start using it to, which resulted in an almost immediate TPK. The party then voted to allow me to fix the exploit and retcon the session, but by that point there was bad blood all around.


The thing about my game is that I structure downtime actions a lot better than D&D, and reward players for having resources left over by letting them use them on downtime projects. So yeah, if the players always walked away with tons of extra resources left after a mission, they would be able to reinvest into crafting, which would improve their gear beyond the curve, which would further push them off the charts and could well create a monte-haul cycle if I am not allowed to adjust encounter difficulty or market prices to compensate, which my players do not want me to do.
I actually ran into a similar problem during the end of my last game; the players bought all the equipment they could to maximize their “one thing” and then just stopped buying anything else, which made them lag in other areas, particularly defenses, which meant they complained that every mission was too hard. And then used up all that saved money to drown the last session in consumables and make it a joke.
The end result was four overly hard missions with bitchy players, and then one overly easy mission which resulted in me being frustrated at the lack of a mechanical “climax”.




As I said in my letter, the optimal strategy is to look at every encounter / obstacle in isolation and ask yourself "how can I get through this using as few resources as possible". This guarantees you will have enough to get through the mission (barring catastrophic bad luck or mistakes on someone's part) and will hopefully leave you with a nice bit of extra resources left over to stash away so that in the future you can weather said catastrophic bad luck and mistakes.

Batcathat
2021-06-15, 03:38 PM
For me as a player? Yes, absolutely! But Talakeal's players don't seem inclined to do the necessary amount of research to understand a problem.

Given this limitation, what would you suggest? Do you think a "strike that: R&R - Research and Recon - are the biggest min-maxing / optimization things you can do in Heart of Darkness; teamwork weighs in after those" would encourage Talakeal's players towards critical evaluation of their opposition?

I don't really know, to be honest. Personally, I would rather fail to solve a mystery by missing (or forgetting) the occasional clue, than to succeed but feel it was thanks to the GM spoon-feeding me everything I need to know (Yes, I realize that the "right" level is completely subjective). But this group don't seem to share my attitude in the matter so I don't know. Just never have anything being anything else than it appears and never have anyone lie to the party? I'm not quite sure if I'm kidding or not...

Grod_The_Giant
2021-06-15, 03:43 PM
Basically, they don't want to have to be "on" all the time
Again, it's this. This is the problem. Your players want a simple game where they don't have to think too hard about tactics and consequences, and that's not the kind of game you want to run.

Talakeal
2021-06-15, 03:50 PM
Again, it's this. This is the problem. Your players want a simple game where they don't have to think too hard about tactics and consequences, and that's not the kind of game you want to run.

Agreed.

Which, although its not great, its something I could work with. The problem is that they are also perfectionists who can’t handle failure, no matter how soft it is.

Grod_The_Giant
2021-06-15, 04:34 PM
Agreed.

Which, although its not great, its something I could work with. The problem is that they are also perfectionists who can’t handle failure, no matter how soft it is.
I guess you just have to run games with no failure conditions? <shrug> Think of it as an improv challenge--whatever weird direction they hare off in, find a way to make it the "right" choice.

For encounters... maybe try to make them stand-alone? Move to per-encounter resources, let the players take the equivalent of a long rest after every fight, and otherwise make sure that it doesn't matter how well or badly they perform.

RandomPeasant
2021-06-15, 04:40 PM
I don't think having a plot hurts player agency in any meaningful way, as long as you let the players interact with the plot in their own way rather than following a script.

Player agency is a spectrum, not a binary. Having a set plot means players don't have the agency to choose to go do something else, or to do things that derail the plot. It doesn't mean they have no agency by any means, but it does mean they have less agency than if you just said "here's the world, do some stuff". That be desirable, as the success of Paizo's adventure paths demonstrates. Many people don't want to think of a fully actualized goal for their character (particularly not one that balances with the other players and what the DM wants to do), and would prefer to be told "here's the problem you need to solve, solve it however you want".

In particular, a plot that is set up multiple in-game years in advance is almost never going to survive contact with the players. With that much time, the players will inevitable derail the plot by figuring out a double-cross too early, or haring off across the world in pursuit of something that they thought was way more important than you did, or end up with enough power to sequence-break and stop the plot, or just switch sides. You can stop any of those, but only by denying their agency.

OldTrees1
2021-06-15, 05:05 PM
@OldTrees:

A few people have flat out said "do not show them this letter", Pex for one. But, in context, most of them are saying that I should just not send this particular letter, that the concept or the bullet points are fine. A few more people, not all of them on the forum, have asked me if any letter could possibly make someone start acting more mature, or if it was even appropriate to try. Further that with the idea that everyone is primed to read the letter in the worst light possible, and I think the odds are it would only make things worse.

Yes. A lot of people evaluate this particular letter (a part, or the overall letter) has flaws that we expect will backfire. In your opening post you told us how your "most level headed and trusted player" summarized it. (My how quickly people forgot the draft of the letter was already delivered to one player.)

Some were about word choice/tone at specific parts.
Some were about the letter saying something different than you meant.
Some were about the blowback effect of one sided criticism.
Some were about the fear that you can only control yourself, so it might be impossible to write a letter to get the players to be more mature.

This is not saying giving advice, especially to new players, is bad. However it is saying your current letter, and maybe even its primary intent, is not a good way to give advice.


For example, multiple people are reading the bits about enemies playing smart and exploiting weaknesses to mean I am playing to win and will meta-game and make the enemies omniscient, genius, hive minds to perfectly exploit the PCs weaknesses, when really I am talking about things like (examples from last campaign) a flying, fire-breathing dragon testing the party's defenses from the air before landing and wading into melee, or a muscular hobgoblin seeing a tiny frail wizard blowing his comrades apart with fireballs from a staff and deciding to try wrestling the staff away from her.

Communication is hard and it is especially challenging for your situation (for a variety of reasons, some of which I don't understand). Your most reasonable player, and some people on the forum read that section in various ways you did not intend (although not to your hyperbole). Even I read it that way (although I ignored that reading since I had prior context). Some of this is audience, some is presentation (including preconceptions from prior experiences with you), and some is word choice. You have been given some advice on that 3rd category (see quote below for an example).

I do not envy your communication challenges. I hope you succeed. In this case I believe the open letter would make things worse, but maybe you could make some new player advice that has a positive impact. It is possible.


"In this campaign you will face some enemies with different tactics they can switch between depending on what they learn about the defenses they are facing"





I am not opposed to Quertus' idea about showing the players my notes afterwards, although I do fear that if the players discover a mistake on my part (likely a math error or forgetting to write something down) it will backfire and only fuel their convictions that I am cheating.

How often would there be a mistake? If they suspect every encounter is cheating but only find a mistake 1% of the time, they will probably yell but might start to accept you are not always cheating.

And showing your notes in advance (when possible, and make it possible more often) would not have this concern. Just thank them when they notice a math error.

However I understand the trepidation. My worst experience was with a player where we could not establish enough trust. This would not have been enough to fix that situation, but they would have reacted positively to the transparency.


I am willing to admit that I make mistakes and that I do share part of the blame when things go bad, I am not that arrogant. However, the players need to realize that I am not the sole factor in determining their success of failure.

1) I agree.
2) If I wanted to teach a new player that lesson, I would expect I should sandwich it in between admitting my contributions to their failure. I don't trust average new players to openly accept one sided criticism. Acknowledging my own contribution helps them swallow the lesson.
3) I don't dare suggest you try that with your group. I have not idea how to communicate the message credibly in that environment without it backfiring.



The example of a lightning weak monster who is immune to fire and cold is just something I pulled out of my butt, but isn't too similar to a D&D golem. Assume they can't find out more because they failed their knowledge: arcana check and we are playing D&D RAW.

They failed knowledge: arcana against the golem. However they can see the golem is made out of ____ so I could tell them what everyone knows about fire/cold/lightning/acid vs mundane pieces of ____. For the more obscure bits of common knowledge I might ask for a Knowledge nature check. For example: The blacksmith uses a forge to heat up the metal they work on. Metal gets cold quickly but warms up quickly. Lightning strikes the temple's metal spire a lot. Iron can rust but Silver does not tarnish.

When I can't answer a specific question because the PC does not know. I can still mention tangents that the PC does know about. They are not directly applicable. For example an Iron Golem is not exactly like iron.

Pex
2021-06-15, 05:20 PM
3: The issue was t that they didn't catch the clue, they did and meant to act on it, but then forgot all about it and said it was my job to remind them.



How long was it real world time between noticing the "vampire" had a reflection and the fight they made harder because they thought it was a vampire? If it was that same game session a half-hour before, the players forgetting is their fault. If it was a week ago last game session, you can't blame them forgetting. If it was that week ago you can just flat out remind them of the incident. It hasn't been a game world week, so the characters should have remembered even though the players haven't. If you feel the need at least ask for an Intelligence check, say DC. A success gives you the excuse to tell them about the reflection. A failure you tell them they know they're forgetting something important about the vampire.

icefractal
2021-06-15, 05:22 PM
They failed knowledge: arcana against the golem. However they can see the golem is made out of ____ so I could tell them what everyone knows about fire/cold/lightning/acid vs mundane pieces of ____.A lot of D&D monsters, probably the majority, don't have any useful visual indicators to their abilities though. People might recognize them, but if you'd never played before, how would you know that ...

Most type of animal-people are basically on the same level as other humanoids - there could be a strong one due to class levels, but "a dozen lizardfolk" isn't usually scary to mid-level characters. But, squid-headed people (Illithids) and tiger-headed people (Rakshasas) are deadly threats.

A big bug with weird antennae is actually one of the greatest threats to many adventurers (a Rust Monster), despite that most big bugs are just normal melee types with at worst a nasty poison.

Red Dragons breath fire ... ok, clear linkage. White Dragons breath cold ... makes sense. Blue Dragons breath ... lightning? And they burrow in the sand? Not something you could tell from a picture of one.

So I don't see things like the "Sneeze Ogre" as a puzzle monster just because its abilities aren't immediately apparent. Heck, if it didn't have the nose at all and instead had a "Telekinetic Push" ability with no visual indicator, that would still be on par with the majority of monsters.

Talakeal
2021-06-15, 06:08 PM
A lot of D&D monsters, probably the majority, don't have any useful visual indicators to their abilities though. People might recognize them, but if you'd never played before, how would you know that ...

Most type of animal-people are basically on the same level as other humanoids - there could be a strong one due to class levels, but "a dozen lizardfolk" isn't usually scary to mid-level characters. But, squid-headed people (Illithids) and tiger-headed people (Rakshasas) are deadly threats.

A big bug with weird antennae is actually one of the greatest threats to many adventurers (a Rust Monster), despite that most big bugs are just normal melee types with at worst a nasty poison.

Red Dragons breath fire ... ok, clear linkage. White Dragons breath cold ... makes sense. Blue Dragons breath ... lightning? And they burrow in the sand? Not something you could tell from a picture of one.

So I don't see things like the "Sneeze Ogre" as a puzzle monster just because its abilities aren't immediately apparent. Heck, if it didn't have the nose at all and instead had a "Telekinetic Push" ability with no visual indicator, that would still be on par with the majority of monsters.

Which is more or less what I have been saying all along, that all the “gotcha” talk is just telling DMs not to home brew , but Gloating Swine is the only person who will come right out and say it.

NichG
2021-06-15, 06:51 PM
In my experience, player characters want to amass as much money and power as possible. They also usually have some sort of epic goal that requires a lot of power, whether or not it is their idea or based on the DMs plot. Even something as simple as keeping your family safe in a dangerous world of pillaging orcs and marauding dragons can require a lot of personal power and magic swag.

So yeah, its possible to play an alternate game where those assumptions aren't true, but I haven’t really talked to anyone who is interested in challenging that sort of model, and didn't really think about it whent talking about power curves.

It'd be good to separate 'what you expect they would want', 'what they actually will do given a choice', and 'what your setting/pacing/GM decisions encourage' here.

If you really don't intend your setting or game events to come with periodically escalating innate difficulty, then it doesn't make sense to tell them 'its a bad idea to take easy missions' because that would imply that you have a reason that you aren't saying as to why they will later be punished for taking it too easy.

You don't have to make the decision for them whether low risk/low reward or high risk low reward or low risk high reward or whatever is desirable. It would be enough to say clearly 'this CR 5 quest comes with a roll off of the CR 5 loot table (or 'comes with rewards appropriate to CR 5'), this CR 9 quest comes with CR 9 rewards, this CR 11 quest comes with CR 7 rewards but also narrative rewards (favors owed, etc), this CR 3 quest comes with CR 7 rewards but there's something that seems off about the posting, etc. Then, see what they do.

In my experience, players don't always go for the thing that maximizes money and power. They go for the thing which seems like the best deal for them, and a whiff of there being some kind of trap or gotcha to it will often make players sacrifice power. That's not because they made a mistake, that's them telling you what their risk/reward preferences are.

There's an item I handed out in two separate campaigns (edit: I'm wrong, the item was in one campaign and I made it a high level class ability in another campaign and no one took that particular class) which was described something like this: 'This item will grant you a wish with no limits and a guarantee of no genie-ing or twisting of the wish - literally I will work with you as to how the wish is granted until you are satisfied and say so, and if you aren't it isn't used up. However, it will also grant a wish of equal potency and scope to whatever entity in the universe is currently your greatest potential antagonist.' That item never gets used, despite that a character could literally wish for an infinite Strength score or to immediately become Lv1000 or to rebuild the game universe with them as its creator or something absurd like that, and I would run with it. I can give that item out without any kind of worry because it's an interesting question of whether anything would rise to the level that the players would actually consider using it. Even if the item is never actually used, the conversations about 'we could use the wand...' are gameplay content.

I recall you had a similar story of your players having a Wish but not being able to decide how to use it. Don't assume that's a mistake on their part with respect to their actual motivations. Protecting themselves from e.g. gameplay that annoys them may be a higher priority than advancement for them.

warty goblin
2021-06-15, 07:27 PM
Agreed.

Which, although its not great, its something I could work with. The problem is that they are also perfectionists who can’t handle failure, no matter how soft it is.

So one thing this thread has had me thinking about is the combat as sport/combat as war split, because from your description, I don' think your players really want either. I think they want a third option: combat* as performance. Think of it like a concert; the whole point is for people to demonstrate their talent in these areas, and failing doesn't improve the experience. Nobody thinks a concert is enhanced by somebody's guitar breaking halfway through their solo, least of all the guitar player. So when one of your players builds a melee specialist, it's because they find the performance of being really good at melee combat enjoyable, not because they're interested in exploring the consequences of not having a bow in a world containing archers. Kiting them with an archer is, basically, deliberately cutting their strings. It isn't going to ever make the experience more enjoyable or interesting for them, whether that incidence rate is 20%, 10%, or 1%. It's just going to suck. So I suggest not doing that to them.

This is of course a preference of your particular players. For players who want to engage in the game differently, being kited is just fine. Which is to say I'm not saying you did anything wrong in a global setting, just something that didn't work for this particular group of people.

*Or gameplay more generally for out of combat stuff

Grod_The_Giant
2021-06-15, 07:29 PM
So one thing this thread has had me thinking about is the combat as sport/combat as war split, because from your description, I don' think your players really want either. I think they want a third option: combat* as performance.
That's a really good way to put it. We (as a collective group of gaming nerds) should try to remember it; it's a useful addition to the lexicon.

Cluedrew
2021-06-15, 07:44 PM
But of course good times don’t make for long forum threads.I would just like to point out, I haven't seen a short thread from you about the good times either.


I think they want a third option: combat* as performance.Oh that's good. I would like it to be the fourth option after combat as event which is how I describe combat in game that isn't focused on combat, but it doesn't really apply to this thread. (In short, combat is an event in the campaign and we resolve it to figure out what happens in it and what happens next.) Combat as War and combat as sport are both challenge focused modes of play, this is more about relaxation or expression.

OldTrees1
2021-06-15, 08:29 PM
A lot of D&D monsters, probably the majority, don't have any useful visual indicators to their abilities though. People might recognize them, but if you'd never played before, how would you know that ...

I do not understand your objection. Could you give me an example of
1) A player asking a question about a monster,
2) that the PC does not know the answer,
3) and there is nothing they do know related to any part of the question

The initial example was about would various damage types work against a monster. The monster is made of a material. I can give an answer about the material. In some cases that will be a red herring. But for many cases it will be slightly more helpful that saying the PC knows nothing about fire, cold, or lightning.

Is that giraffe headed person a danger? The PC does not know (why? was it a failed nature check, or just a GM that is pessimistic about PC knowledge?). Has the PC heard about Lizardfolk, ratfolk, kenku, and gnolls? From what the PC does know about animal headed people tend to be relatively equal strength to other people. Are there exceptions? Yes (Werewolf for example). Does the PC know of any exceptions? Maybe. Now the Player knows what their PC knows. Aka that most animal headed people are not a big threat but exceptions like werewolves exist. With that information the Player can make decisions based on their character knowledge. This is especially useful if the players have felt blinded before.

Again this is a technique to help a GM provide the Players more of their characters knowledge. If you already strike a good balance then you don't need this technique. However if the players feel constantly ignorant, then maybe it is worthwhile. Give the PCs knowledge checks and have failure be reminders about what they already knew rather than silence.

Mechalich
2021-06-15, 08:35 PM
So one thing this thread has had me thinking about is the combat as sport/combat as war split, because from your description, I don' think your players really want either. I think they want a third option: combat* as performance. Think of it like a concert; the whole point is for people to demonstrate their talent in these areas, and failing doesn't improve the experience. Nobody thinks a concert is enhanced by somebody's guitar breaking halfway through their solo, least of all the guitar player. So when one of your players builds a melee specialist, it's because they find the performance of being really good at melee combat enjoyable, not because they're interested in exploring the consequences of not having a bow in a world containing archers. Kiting them with an archer is, basically, deliberately cutting their strings. It isn't going to ever make the experience more enjoyable or interesting for them, whether that incidence rate is 20%, 10%, or 1%. It's just going to suck. So I suggest not doing that to them.

This is of course a preference of your particular players. For players who want to engage in the game differently, being kited is just fine. Which is to say I'm not saying you did anything wrong in a global setting, just something that didn't work for this particular group of people.

*Or gameplay more generally for out of combat stuff

To expand on the concert example, you need to match the type of band - meaning party composition - to the pieces they play - meaning individual encounters - and those pieces need to add up to a functional set list - meaning the overall campaign plot. If the players just want to jam casually and use their instruments solo, don't throw a set list at them that presumes orchestral coordination.

There have been repeated comments on how this homebrew system favors synergy very highly. I wonder if that impact is the same for NPCs and PCs. If it is, I suspect that contributes to a lot of the sense of unfairness, because a group of NPCs governed by a single GM are almost certainly better at coordinating with themselves rather than a group of disparate players each trying to insure their individual actions are effective.

RandomPeasant
2021-06-15, 08:47 PM
Which is more or less what I have been saying all along, that all the “gotcha” talk is just telling DMs not to home brew , but Gloating Swine is the only person who will come right out and say it.

The point, I think, is that you can eventually learn the monsters. The stuff in the Monster Manual may be arbitrary, but it's a finite list of arbitrary things. You will eventually learn that the blue Dragon breaths lightning, and that the spider-centaurs are casters, and what the various Ooze color-coding means. But that doesn't exist for homebrewed monsters (and, to be fair, this also applies to obscure publish monsters). Which means that as DM you have to be very aggressive about hinting at what your homebrew stuff does. Don't wait for players to roll Knowledge, proactively tell them thing their characters should know. Try to avoid homebrew puzzle monsters. It's much easier to deal with a creature with unknown capabilities if those capabilities are basically "fair", rather than in some weird corner that needs a specific strategy to deal with.

NichG
2021-06-15, 08:48 PM
So one thing this thread has had me thinking about is the combat as sport/combat as war split, because from your description, I don' think your players really want either. I think they want a third option: combat* as performance. Think of it like a concert; the whole point is for people to demonstrate their talent in these areas, and failing doesn't improve the experience. Nobody thinks a concert is enhanced by somebody's guitar breaking halfway through their solo, least of all the guitar player. So when one of your players builds a melee specialist, it's because they find the performance of being really good at melee combat enjoyable, not because they're interested in exploring the consequences of not having a bow in a world containing archers. Kiting them with an archer is, basically, deliberately cutting their strings. It isn't going to ever make the experience more enjoyable or interesting for them, whether that incidence rate is 20%, 10%, or 1%. It's just going to suck. So I suggest not doing that to them.

This is of course a preference of your particular players. For players who want to engage in the game differently, being kited is just fine. Which is to say I'm not saying you did anything wrong in a global setting, just something that didn't work for this particular group of people.

*Or gameplay more generally for out of combat stuff

I like this a lot. Especially the idea of designing a game around it. 'This defender ability taunts an enemy into rage, doubles the damage that they deal if they choose to attack the user but in exchange granting the user an extra 5*Lv DR against that enemy's attacks. Attacks made against the user of this ability have double the normal environmental damage and knockback effects'. 'This warrior ability modifies an attack sequence to lift both the warrior and target into the air 1ft per point of damage dealt, and leaves them hanging until the end of the warrior's next turn (can be extended). The user of this ability does not suffer falling damage from height gained as part of their attack sequence.' 'This ability proposes a no-interference 1vs1 duel in the middle of a fight. If the target accepts, they and the user remain visible to the outside world but exist in a frozen moment 30ft in radius within the swirl of battle for up to 3 rounds, which happen immediately. If the target refuses, they suffer morale penalties.', 'This ability may be used when you drop an undifferentiated enemy (mob, army, or goon squad) - up to 1d4! (exploding die) other members of the enemy squad explode in sequence, so long as they are within 10ft of each-other', 'for one successful usage per campaign arc, when a villain monologues, roll a full attack worth of damage as if each attack were a crit. If this exceeds the villain's hitpoint total, you ambush them with a sneak attack and they explode before getting three words out; otherwise, they take no damage and sidestep the shot or attack with a sneer'

OldTrees1
2021-06-15, 08:50 PM
Which is more or less what I have been saying all along, that all the “gotcha” talk is just telling DMs not to home brew , but Gloating Swine is the only person who will come right out and say it.

Odd. Gloating Swine did not say that either. They said there are some existing monsters that could have a similar effect on your party.

The talk about "gotcha" is saying, if your GM for players as surprise and puzzle adverse as you are Talakeal, then it might be wise to avoid monsters (homebrew or otherwise) that are designed in a way that will provoke these horror stories you have told us about.

Recently I homebrewed a flying two headed snake that creates a hurricane, controls winds, pulls down meteors, sends out electrical pulses, and has a stunning howl. The flying snake was in the middle of the howling hurricane surrounded by a wind wall with shells of electricity emanating out from it. If the PCs had done some recon they would have noticed some meteor strikes nearby. This was Zrin-Hala, the Howling Storm and everything except the name was homebrew. Homebrew does not need to full of "gotcha" moments.

Encounters can have "gotcha" moments. There are many official creatures (like Illithids) that can have the same effect depending on how much the players read the monster manual. My group handles surprise much much much better than your group Talakeal. So I don't need to worry when a "gotcha" moment happens. However you do. Your group was extremely negative every single time.

The advice is not telling you "don't homebrew". The advice is "we don't think your group enjoys your 'gotcha' moments, we suggest you avoid them if you want to avoid the reaction they provoke from your group". I fully expect you will still homebrew monsters. That is one reason Quertus suggested you share the monster stats (homebrew or official) with the group.

Talakeal
2021-06-15, 09:35 PM
Odd. Gloating Swine did not say that either. They said there are some existing monsters that could have a similar effect on your party.

The talk about "gotcha" is saying, if your GM for players as surprise and puzzle adverse as you are Talakeal, then it might be wise to avoid monsters (homebrew or otherwise) that are designed in a way that will provoke these horror stories you have told us about.


Encounters can have "gotcha" moments. There are many official creatures (like Illithids) that can have the same effect depending on how much the players read the monster manual. My group handles surprise much much much better than your group Talakeal. So I don't need to worry when a "gotcha" moment happens. However you do. Your group was extremely negative every single time.

The advice is not telling you "don't homebrew". The advice is "we don't think your group enjoys your 'gotcha' moments, we suggest you avoid them if you want to avoid the reaction they provoke from your group". I fully expect you will still homebrew monsters. That is one reason Quertus suggested you share the monster stats (homebrew or official) with the group.

The whole concept of a "gotcha" is a mess. In my mind, a gotcha would be a deliberate subversion, a sort of trap, like a mimic, or a nilbog, or an ear-worm, something that punishes smart play.

A surprise is just a lack of reconnaissance on the part of the players.

A gimmick fight is one where you have a different objective than just killing the other guy or where the rules of the game are skewed. I would say that pretty much anything that can grow stronger if attacked the wrong way, has broad immunities or weaknesses, can be killed in parts, summons adds, mutates over time, has life leech, exists in a magic location, or uses a magic item is probably a gimmick.


I would say the fomorian was a surprise and a gimmick, while a nilbog is both a gotcha and a gimmick. A hydra is a gimmick fight, but probably not a surprise or a gotcha. The avatar of violence could be all three on the first encounter, but once the party fell back and researched it, it should have only fallen into the third.

None of these are puzzles mind you, things with only one solution like a tarrasque that needs to be wished dead or a jabberwocky that can only be killed by a vorpal sword, or any of the 2E artifacts. Although, honestly, these are so vague they aren't really good puzzles either.



Odd. Gloating Swine did not say that either. They said there are some existing monsters that could have a similar effect on your party.

Did you read the same post I read? Because...



Which is fine, if you never use homebrew monsters that mostly resemble normal monsters but are actually different with unexepcted capabilities.

But you do do that. You make super-sneeze ogres and magic unkillable guardians.

Sure doesn't seem to mention any existing monsters to me, even though Ogre-Magi and Aleax would fit those descriptions pretty well.


How long was it real world time between noticing the "vampire" had a reflection and the fight they made harder because they thought it was a vampire? If it was that same game session a half-hour before, the players forgetting is their fault. If it was a week ago last game session, you can't blame them forgetting. If it was that week ago you can just flat out remind them of the incident. It hasn't been a game world week, so the characters should have remembered even though the players haven't. If you feel the need at least ask for an Intelligence check, say DC. A success gives you the excuse to tell them about the reflection. A failure you tell them they know they're forgetting something important about the vampire.

I don't recall, it was a long time ago. But do keep in mind, that the more time passes the more likely I am to let it slip my mind or to recognize the right time to remind them.




The point, I think, is that you can eventually learn the monsters. The stuff in the Monster Manual may be arbitrary, but it's a finite list of arbitrary things. You will eventually learn that the blue Dragon breaths lightning, and that the spider-centaurs are casters, and what the various Ooze color-coding means. But that doesn't exist for homebrewed monsters (and, to be fair, this also applies to obscure publish monsters). Which means that as DM you have to be very aggressive about hinting at what your homebrew stuff does. Don't wait for players to roll Knowledge, proactively tell them thing their characters should know. Try to avoid homebrew puzzle monsters. It's much easier to deal with a creature with unknown capabilities if those capabilities are basically "fair", rather than in some weird corner that needs a specific strategy to deal with.

True. As long as you avoid templates, or feats, or monsters with class levels, or god forbid fight an enemy spellcaster.

But no, I would never use a puzzle monster, let alone homebrew one myself.


There have been repeated comments on how this homebrew system favors synergy very highly. I wonder if that impact is the same for NPCs and PCs. If it is, I suspect that contributes to a lot of the sense of unfairness, because a group of NPCs governed by a single GM are almost certainly better at coordinating with themselves rather than a group of disparate players each trying to insure their individual actions are effective.

Not really, no.

You can really only do that sort of synergy with a large and heavily customized group of humanoids, which most encounters aren't. And a lot of the synergy is involved in non combat stuff that NPCs handwave away off screen anyway.

I have often wondered why people never consider the fact that the players have multiple people working together to come up with solutions could at least partially counteract the face that a single DM is controlling all the characters.


I would just like to point out, I haven't seen a short thread from you about the good times either.

True... but generally I only make a post when I am asking for advice. There have been more than a few where I, for example, ask for advice building an adventure, get half a dozen responses, thank everyone, and then the thread quietly fades away.

Maybe look at my posts on the media sub-forum for more observation based posts


So one thing this thread has had me thinking about is the combat as sport/combat as war split, because from your description, I don' think your players really want either. I think they want a third option: combat* as performance. Think of it like a concert; the whole point is for people to demonstrate their talent in these areas, and failing doesn't improve the experience. Nobody thinks a concert is enhanced by somebody's guitar breaking halfway through their solo, least of all the guitar player. So when one of your players builds a melee specialist, it's because they find the performance of being really good at melee combat enjoyable, not because they're interested in exploring the consequences of not having a bow in a world containing archers. Kiting them with an archer is, basically, deliberately cutting their strings. It isn't going to ever make the experience more enjoyable or interesting for them, whether that incidence rate is 20%, 10%, or 1%. It's just going to suck. So I suggest not doing that to them.

This is of course a preference of your particular players. For players who want to engage in the game differently, being kited is just fine. Which is to say I'm not saying you did anything wrong in a global setting, just something that didn't work for this particular group of people.

That's a very interesting idea.


It'd be good to separate 'what you expect they would want', 'what they actually will do given a choice', and 'what your setting/pacing/GM decisions encourage' here.

If you really don't intend your setting or game events to come with periodically escalating innate difficulty, then it doesn't make sense to tell them 'its a bad idea to take easy missions' because that would imply that you have a reason that you aren't saying as to why they will later be punished for taking it too easy.

You don't have to make the decision for them whether low risk/low reward or high risk low reward or low risk high reward or whatever is desirable. It would be enough to say clearly 'this CR 5 quest comes with a roll off of the CR 5 loot table (or 'comes with rewards appropriate to CR 5'), this CR 9 quest comes with CR 9 rewards, this CR 11 quest comes with CR 7 rewards but also narrative rewards (favors owed, etc), this CR 3 quest comes with CR 7 rewards but there's something that seems off about the posting, etc. Then, see what they do.

That's an interesting idea, but its pretty much an edge case.

Like, for example, I have never seen a DMG which has alternate CR guidelines for parties who donate all of their magic items to charity and adventure in their skivvies, even though that could be a potential game type.

I mean, functionally doing so would be pretty easy, just double the cost to buy or craft items and halve the rate of experience gain; but I have never had a player suggest anything of the sort. Now, increasing the amount of treasure and XP I give out on the other hand, that is something players have asked for (but NEVER just starting at high level, they need the illusion of earning it).

OldTrees1
2021-06-15, 10:02 PM
Did you read the same post I read? Because...
It looks like I confused icefractal and Gloating Swine.

Sorry about that.

However even Gloating Swine did not say "Don't homebrew". Please take the time to represent their position fully. They said

"Which is fine, if you never use homebrew monsters that mostly resemble normal monsters but are actually different with unexpected capabilities.
The issue was the subversion, not it being a homebrew.

Yes, they did not mention official monsters in that post, but that should not stop you from seeing their point is mostly about the really long qualifier. Aka their point is about the subversion.

I don't like pasta that is cover in oil from an oil/gasoline refinery. Did I say "I don't like pasta"? No.


The whole concept of a "gotcha" is a mess. In my mind, a gotcha would be a deliberate subversion, a sort of trap, like a mimic, or a nilbog, or an ear-worm, something that punishes smart play.

A surprise is just a lack of reconnaissance on the part of the players.

A gimmick fight is one where you have a different objective than just killing the other guy or where the rules of the game are skewed. I would say that pretty much anything that can grow stronger if attacked the wrong way, has broad immunities or weaknesses, can be killed in parts, summons adds, mutates over time, has life leech, exists in a magic location, or uses a magic item is probably a gimmick.

I would say the fomorian was a surprise and a gimmick, while a nilbog is both a gotcha and a gimmick. A hydra is a gimmick fight, but probably not a surprise or a gotcha. The avatar of violence could be all three on the first encounter, but once the party fell back and researched it, it should have only fallen into the third.

None of these are puzzles mind you, things with only one solution like a tarrasque that needs to be wished dead or a jabberwocky that can only be killed by a vorpal sword, or any of the 2E artifacts. Although, honestly, these are so vague they aren't really good puzzles either.

Classify it however you want. I am focusing on the impact.
What do you call a subversion due to GM failure to communicate (regardless of whether it was intentional or otherwise)?
What do you call a subversion when the players are too paranoid to respond maturely to a unexpected subversion to their disadvantage?
Instead of focusing on what the GM did. Let's focus on what the players are reacting to.

Now since you have such paranoid players, we have been suggesting you avoid provoking this response. Nobody is saying you have to stop homebrewing. Please listen to what people are saying. You can still homebrew and avoid this mistake. You can avoid homebrew and still make this mistake. Please don't misrepresent this advice as "der de der don't home brew".

If this comes across as overly harsh, I apologize. I was/am growing increasingly agitated at you truncating positions and the misunderstandings / miscommunication / unnecessary arguments that happen as a result.

NichG
2021-06-15, 10:29 PM
That's an interesting idea, but its pretty much an edge case.

Like, for example, I have never seen a DMG which has alternate CR guidelines for parties who donate all of their magic items to charity and adventure in their skivvies, even though that could be a potential game type.

I mean, functionally doing so would be pretty easy, just double the cost to buy or craft items and halve the rate of experience gain; but I have never had a player suggest anything of the sort. Now, increasing the amount of treasure and XP I give out on the other hand, that is something players have asked for (but NEVER just starting at high level, they need the illusion of earning it).

Um, I think you're missing the point here. The point is not to rebalance the game around the assumption that the players will do something different. The point is to fix the game and let the players choose what they want to do, even if it unbalances the game. You don't need to do anything to the rules, just say 'here's a CR 3 mission, a CR 5 mission, a CR 9 mission, and a CR 13 mission: do what you like'. If they take the CR 3 missions as Lv9 characters, they gain almost no XP but slowly build wealth. If they decide to poke their nose just deeply enough into the CR 13 mission as a Lv5 party to grab a +4 item or two, then flee with their lives and do a bunch of easy CR 2 missions with their cool CR 13 gear, great! That's the game they decided they wanted to play.

Talakeal
2021-06-15, 11:48 PM
Um, I think you're missing the point here. The point is not to rebalance the game around the assumption that the players will do something different. The point is to fix the game and let the players choose what they want to do, even if it unbalances the game. You don't need to do anything to the rules, just say 'here's a CR 3 mission, a CR 5 mission, a CR 9 mission, and a CR 13 mission: do what you like'. If they take the CR 3 missions as Lv9 characters, they gain almost no XP but slowly build wealth. If they decide to poke their nose just deeply enough into the CR 13 mission as a Lv5 party to grab a +4 item or two, then flee with their lives and do a bunch of easy CR 2 missions with their cool CR 13 gear, great! That's the game they decided they wanted to play.

The thing is, my system uses a much more simplified system for wealth and experience than D&D.

By RAW, a character who never does anything but clear the rats out of basements will level up just as fast as anyone else, and though their buying power will be very small, they will be a masterful craftsman as the system does not charge for materials and they will be able to devote near 100% of their resources to crafting, allowing them to create things far better than their adventuring ilk.

As to whether that's a problem or not, I don't know, but I feel like it lacks the feel of a guy who only sticks to the easiest jobs because he is extremely lazy / risk averse or whatever.


It looks like I confused icefractal and Gloating Swine.

Sorry about that.

However even Gloating Swine did not say "Don't homebrew". Please take the time to represent their position fully. They said

The issue was the subversion, not it being a homebrew.

Yes, they did not mention official monsters in that post, but that should not stop you from seeing their point is mostly about the really long qualifier. Aka their point is about the subversion.

I don't like pasta that is cover in oil from an oil/gasoline refinery. Did I say "I don't like pasta"? No.



Classify it however you want. I am focusing on the impact.
What do you call a subversion due to GM failure to communicate (regardless of whether it was intentional or otherwise)?
What do you call a subversion when the players are too paranoid to respond maturely to a unexpected subversion to their disadvantage?
Instead of focusing on what the GM did. Let's focus on what the players are reacting to.

Now since you have such paranoid players, we have been suggesting you avoid provoking this response. Nobody is saying you have to stop homebrewing. Please listen to what people are saying. You can still homebrew and avoid this mistake. You can avoid homebrew and still make this mistake. Please don't misrepresent this advice as "der de der don't home brew".

If this comes across as overly harsh, I apologize. I was/am growing increasingly agitated at you truncating positions and the misunderstandings / miscommunication / unnecessary arguments that happen as a result.

Not harsh, no.

Here's the thing though, I am in a unique position because I run mostly homebrew content and have very eccentric players who border on paranoid.

My players don't care about the lore or memorizing monster manuals, they legitimately don't know if I am homebrewing a monster or copying it straight out of the Monster Manual the vast majority of the time. Monsters in my game tend to be a lot more grounded than they are in D&D, where every high level creature has a laundry list of spell like abilities, heck they are significantly more limited than PC spellcasters in my own game.

Like, I opened up my 3.5 MM to a random page. I got Dragon, Gold. Gold Dragons have two breath weapons, one fire one weakening gas, can take on the form of any human or animal, breath water, receive a luck bonus to saves, can detect gems, can bless, can geas, can sunburst, can cast foresight, and cast spells as a 19th level sorcerer with access to 3 cleric domains. Can you imagine someone on the forum getting the advice that they need to somehow foreshadow all of that to the players before facing one? Its absurd, and I have certainly never seen anyone suggest it is necessary.

So all this talk about surprises and gotchas and whatnot just feels like its totally missing the point, and is pretty much a forum complaint rather than something my players actually voice, except that monster abilities are one of the many things they accuse me of fudging when they are pissed off.

It just feels like I get a lot more flak from running homebrew systems and that people think me doing so is what makes my players paranoid, and its kind of disheartening.

NichG
2021-06-16, 12:07 AM
The thing is, my system uses a much more simplified system for wealth and experience than D&D.

By RAW, a character who never does anything but clear the rats out of basements will level up just as fast as anyone else, and though their buying power will be very small, they will be a masterful craftsman as the system does not charge for materials and they will be able to devote near 100% of their resources to crafting, allowing them to create things far better than their adventuring ilk.

As to whether that's a problem or not, I don't know, but I feel like it lacks the feel of a guy who only sticks to the easiest jobs because he is extremely lazy / risk averse or whatever.


The question here is determining what your players actually want and expect though, so whether it lacks a particular feel or corresponds to some system design intent on your part doesn't really factor in... Given the very explicit and not at all hidden choice (e.g. these levels are literally posted, and you commit to choosing adversaries that exactly correspond to the posted level, and loot exactly corresponds to the posted level), if the party is Lv X, and has a mission board where they have complete and total freedom to choose what mission to accept over a wide range of levels, what is the level Y of the mission they choose? You have some belief about what Y would be, and maybe if you ask them hypothetically they'd give some answer, but you don't actually know what they would do in game until they actually have the freedom to make that choice.

If they say that they want Y=X, but they always pick the Y=X-5 missions, then that says something.

OldTrees1
2021-06-16, 12:28 AM
Not harsh, no.

Here's the thing though, I am in a unique position because I run mostly homebrew content and have very eccentric players who border on paranoid.

My players don't care about the lore or memorizing monster manuals, they legitimately don't know if I am homebrewing a monster or copying it straight out of the Monster Manual the vast majority of the time.

Stop, it really sounds like you are focusing on the "homebrew" and not on the "The forum listened when your players complained to you about 'how the ____ were they supposed to expect the monster could do that!!!!!' when you told us those stories".

Again, I am not trying to be harsh, but if this is you misrepresenting the free advice, AGAIN, then I will be quite frustrated.


Monsters in my game tend to be a lot more grounded than they are in D&D, where every high level creature has a laundry list of spell like abilities, heck they are significantly more limited than PC spellcasters in my own game.

Like, I opened up my 3.5 MM to a random page. I got Dragon, Gold. Gold Dragons have two breath weapons, one fire one weakening gas, can take on the form of any human or animal, breath water, receive a luck bonus to saves, can detect gems, can bless, can geas, can sunburst, can cast foresight, and cast spells as a 19th level sorcerer with access to 3 cleric domains. Can you imagine someone on the forum getting the advice that they need to somehow foreshadow all of that to the players before facing one? Its absurd, and I have certainly never seen anyone suggest it is necessary.

I fail to see how any of this is relevant. The advice is:
1) About the complaints your players had. Some random other group on the forum does not have your players with your complaints
2) About the complaints your players had. They did not complain about it being homebrew vs official. Why would it matter if Gold Dragons were official or homebrew?

This really sounds like you are not listening.


So all this talk about surprises and gotchas and whatnot just feels like its totally missing the point, and is pretty much a forum complaint rather than something my players actually voice, except that monster abilities are one of the many things they accuse me of fudging when they are pissed off.

It just feels like I get a lot more flak from running homebrew systems and that people think me doing so is what makes my players paranoid, and its kind of disheartening.

Yeah, un huh. That feeling is all your fault. You are not hearing what is being said. If you misrepresent advice then of course you will find the advice to be misrepresented.

Your players had a specific complaint. That complaint did not have to do with official vs homebrew. The forum knows you love to homebrew. So the forum translated their complaint and told you what kind of homebrew would trigger the complaint and what kind of homebrew would not trigger the complaint.

You then when and fallaciously claimed the forum was arguing against homebrew.

I find advice works better when you look at it instead of misrepresent it.
I find someone constantly misrepresenting your advice to be very frustrating.
If you are going to keep this up, then I should go away.

GloatingSwine
2021-06-16, 03:29 AM
Thank you for being honest. For years I have suspected that the whole “gotcha” thing was just code for saying DMs shouldn’t be allowed to home-brew content, but everyone else always denies it.

That being said, three things:

1: It wasn’t a super anything, let alone an ogre. It was a nerfed fomorian who dealt non-lethal damage.
2: There was no home-brew at all in The game with a vampire, it was a prefab 3.5 module.
3: The issue was t that they didn't catch the clue, they did and meant to act on it, but then forgot all about it and said it was my job to remind them.

I didn't say that DM's shouldn't be allowed to homebrew. Although quite possibly you, with your players, should stay away from homebrew in the way that you seem to like doing it, which is to create unexpected outcomes and surprises.

The reasons for that are twofold but very closely related.

1. You are bad at giving enough information to your players.

2. Your players deal poorly with hidden information.

If you* are going to homebrew things, you need to be exceptionally straightforward with what the things are and can do. And you need to make it absolutely crystal clear what the things are and can do to your players before they start any fights with them. Figure out a way to present that information diagetically and reward your players for seeking it out.

Every time your players go into an encounter, they need to be going in knowing what the encounter is with and everything it can do. Make finding that out part of the game. Remember the three clue rule, don't be hesitant to prompt them with the sort of skills and resources they could be using to find the information until using those becomes second nature.

Your encounters need to include as few surprises as possible, because your players deal badly with them and you generate them inadvertently by presenting information vaguely and poorly because you think it will "ruin" the encounter. It won't, not for your players. It will make them feel like professionals at their trade because they knew what they were going to do and they did it.

(Even if you're not going to homebrew things. Like in this example the players should have, before they started the fight, been abso****inglutely sure they were fighting a doppelganger, and it's on you to put enough information in the game for them to have found that out.)



* And this is not generalised advice to DMs, this is laser focused on you and your group.

Glorthindel
2021-06-16, 04:45 AM
The thing about my game is that I structure downtime actions a lot better than D&D, and reward players for having resources left over by letting them use them on downtime projects. So yeah, if the players always walked away with tons of extra resources left after a mission, they would be able to reinvest into crafting, which would improve their gear beyond the curve, which would further push them off the charts and could well create a monte-haul cycle if I am not allowed to adjust encounter difficulty or market prices to compensate, which my players do not want me to do.
I actually ran into a similar problem during the end of my last game; the players bought all the equipment they could to maximize their “one thing” and then just stopped buying anything else, which made them lag in other areas, particularly defenses, which meant they complained that every mission was too hard. And then used up all that saved money to drown the last session in consumables and make it a joke.
The end result was four overly hard missions with bitchy players, and then one overly easy mission which resulted in me being frustrated at the lack of a mechanical “climax”.


Have you considered a change to your wealth system? Seems to me a lot of your problems stems from a 'hoarding wealth' midset. Your players devote every bit of wealth towards their one big thing (even beyond where it will create any returns), and pass on any option that would spend wealth outside of that thing, because they see it as 'costing' them advancement on their one big thing.

Since you already use a 'wealth factor' system rather than counting coins, why not adjust the system to create two wealth pools; the first being like your current use (for long-term multi-adventure projects) and a secondary short-term pool, that is refilled at the conclusion of each adventure, regardless of how much of it was spend prior-to or during the adventure. Since any 'unused' short-term pool is effectively lost, it might encourage expenditure on consumables, hirelings (the things covered by your debts system, so they can purchase a few debts without incurring long-term consequences), or things that aren't part of their one big thing (since the pool gets refilled at the conclusion of each adventure, it isn't "wasting" anything to use it to shore up a weakness). Perhaps even make things spent with the short-term pool vanish after the adventure is completed to prevent them just hoarding consumables instead.

The latest version of WFRP does this (and ties it into its downtime system); and although I don't agree with how that game does it (there is no long-term pool, so the parties wealth gets drained completely prior to every adventure), I can see how the idea in principle might encourage freer spending, and less mindless hoarding.

Quertus
2021-06-16, 05:08 AM
So, I'm going to go very meta here. People who hate that, or who hate long rambling posts should skip on past.

-----

Lemme tell you a story about a programmer I really loved working with. I would write really good, solid code. Then he would come along, and replace it with really pretty code that was complete trash. Then I would replace that with really solid code that matched his aesthetic.

I think The Giant had the right idea, picking the single big thing, something that affects the whole forest, and focusing on that. But I keep doing the opposite - I keep picking on the individual points, the trees. I keep doing this because I'm trying to impart a feel, I'm trying to get across, "this is what you want your decision-making to look like". It's more the "every time you try to pick something up with your left hand, I slap it with a ruler" style, rather than the "breaking your left arm and being forced to rely on your right for an extended period of time" style of learning to use your right hand.

And it's not very effective.

There's several posters whom I imagine banging their heads against their desks at how they keep trying to show me a better way to explain myself, but my brain just isn't wired to communicate that way, no matter how hard I try to ask, "how would ______ say this?". And now I'm feeling their pain, being on the opposite side, unable to explain how to look at the problem differently.

And, in that regard, there's a post I can't find (perhaps because it was in another thread) where someone asked Talakeal something to the extent of, "do you want to assign blame, or solve a problem?", that is actually striking directly at the heart of the issue.

The problem with me taking such a focused stance is that, like Talakeal's players, I'm something of a perfectionist¹. And, in this case, with good reason - I believe that, even if Talakeal gets things mostly right, even a single mistake will cause the group to meltdown, and that the results will therefore be indistinguishable to Talakeal from doing it all wrong.

To properly try to condition that, I would need to poke Talakeal every single time that they blow off other posters' concerns, misinterpret something without asking questions, focus on the wrong details… it really would be as hostile an environment as slapping hands with rulers.

So, I guess, going forward, I'm going to try to hit the bigger picture, and just hope that the individual details follow.

¹ "I used to think that I was a perfectionist, but then i realized that that wasn't [/I]quite[/I] right

-----

Talakeal, I am not a trained health professional. But reading



Two of my players are diagnosed with depression
Basically, they don't want to have to be "on" all the time
they freak out if they don't get every single objective
I structure downtime actions a lot better than D&D, and reward players for having resources left over by letting them use them on downtime projects.

I am concerned that your game is… "abusive" is the wrong word… too stressful for your players' mental health. And that their frequent meltdowns are the result of this stress. "What you did wrong right this second" is simply the excuse for letting off all the pressure you are piling on them.

I honestly don't think that your gaming style is healthy for this group. And that nothing will change unless that is fixed. This isn't an issue of your mistakes, or even of your players' maturity, but of the need to deal with all the stress that your game creates.

That's my "big picture" answer.

Batcathat
2021-06-16, 05:29 AM
I am concerned that your game is… "abusive" is the wrong word… too stressful for your players' mental health. And that their frequent meltdowns are the result of this stress. "What you did wrong right this second" is simply the excuse for letting off all the pressure you are piling on them.

I honestly don't think that your gaming style is healthy for this group. And that nothing will change unless that is fixed. This isn't an issue of your mistakes, or even of your players' maturity, but of the need to deal with all the stress that your game creates.

A related possibility might be that the meltdowns are indeed a semi-random release of stress, but over other issues or life in general rather than the game. They wouldn't exactly be the first people to blow up over something unrelated due to stress or something like that.

Quertus
2021-06-16, 06:21 AM
I am not opposed to Quertus' idea about showing the players my notes afterwards, although I do fear that if the players discover a mistake on my part (likely a math error or forgetting to write something down) it will backfire and only fuel their convictions that I am cheating.

Boxed text is hard. My players have a standing policy of ignoring it, and I am not sure I could find enough people willing to go through it all to make sure it can't be twisted or misinterpreted. But, I can't do boxed text for everything, what all is it needed for? How should I start?

I'm too senile to remember your words - please excuse my misuse of the word "puzzle" below.

So, as I write this, I'm seeing several kinds of encounters, which, as The Giant suggested, engage your players differently.

War Gaming

Monster stats are known up front.

Implementation: hand the stat block to the players at (or before) the start of the encounter.

Video Gaming

Like War Gaming, but Monster behaviors are formulaic, and are known up front.

Implementation: hand the stat block and behavior list to the players at (or before) the start of the encounter.

Video Game Puzzle

Like Video Gaming, where Monster behaviors are formulaic, but the fun is figuring them out.

Implementation: hand the stat block *but not* the behavior list to the players at (or before) the start of the encounter.

Realistic Mindset

The Monster bleeds, we can kill it.

Implementation: have the monster stats to hand to the players after the encounter is over.

Puzzle Monster

The challenge is in figuring out how to fight it. But you want to give clues.

Implementation: write boxed text for all the clues (follow "rule of 3" here, and drop lots of different clues, explaining the scenario from different perspectives). Hand that boxed text off to the Playground, your parents, and as many random 5-year-olds as you can get to hold still looking enough to interrogate. Ensure that everyone in your test pool can come up with *multiple* solutions, just from the boxed text. Designate one of your players to read all boxed text, and have all unlocked boxed text available online.

-----

To build trust with your players, I would encourage limiting yourself, for the next campaign (or until they ask you to add in other tools (which requires explaining this list to them - which, having that conversation is a bloody good thing in and of itself to work on trust issues)) to just "War Gaming" and "Puzzle Monsters" with boxed text.

Unless you have more cool ideas like the Doppelganger pretending to be a Vampire, which doesn't fit neatly into either. But is a perfect example for what I'm about to say.

What I really want you to do is to get into the habit of giving your players as much information as possible, as appropriately as possible. And erring on the side of too much information. And this includes, for now, explicitly telling your players which mode of thought they should be in through the different media of, "you see gnolls in the distance [hands players gnolls data sheet]" vs [hands boxed text to designated player]"the Avatar of Hate was rumored to have been bested by one Bilbo of the Shire" vs "you see strange spider-like creatures in the distance"(no handout; players hopefully have been trained (yes, training them here is a prerequisite) to go hunting for boxed text).

In this dichotomy, "the 'vampire' has a reflection" is boxed text.

So, what do you make into boxed text? Everything that the PCs could learn about any monsters (etc, but let's stick with monsters for now) that you just cannot bring yourself to simply hand the players the monster's stat sheet the moment that they encounter or hear rumor of one.

Hope this helps!

Quertus
2021-06-16, 06:52 AM
A related possibility might be that the meltdowns are indeed a semi-random release of stress, but over other issues or life in general rather than the game. They wouldn't exactly be the first people to blow up over something unrelated due to stress or something like that.

This is possible. And unfortunate if true - it means that fixing the primary source of the issues is outside of Talakeal's control.

But it is, at least, a testable hypothesis: before getting locked in to another 2 years of Hell (or, perhaps, the Abyss), Talakeal could run a stand-alone adventure or two, testing out a low difficulty scenario (explicitly telling the players that he is aiming for a lowered resource attrition rate), and seeing how they react.

If the results are positive, then it's a question of rebalancing the downtime engine.

Of course, if the results of the tests say that what the players really want is to balance their own risk/reward choices, then it might not be possible (or might not be necessary?) to reconfigure the downtime engine.


So one thing this thread has had me thinking about is the combat as sport/combat as war split, because from your description, I don' think your players really want either. I think they want a third option: combat* as performance. Think of it like a concert; the whole point is for people to demonstrate their talent in these areas, and failing doesn't improve the experience. Nobody thinks a concert is enhanced by somebody's guitar breaking halfway through their solo, least of all the guitar player. So when one of your players builds a melee specialist, it's because they find the performance of being really good at melee combat enjoyable, not because they're interested in exploring the consequences of not having a bow in a world containing archers. Kiting them with an archer is, basically, deliberately cutting their strings. It isn't going to ever make the experience more enjoyable or interesting for them, whether that incidence rate is 20%, 10%, or 1%. It's just going to suck. So I suggest not doing that to them.

I'm struggling here.

On the one hand, I really like the concept; on the other hand, it doesn't fit at the same layer. It's like "green, purple, and chocolate cake" (new color name notwithstanding).

CaW and CaS are about valid responses to the same encounter - what is fair game, and what is "cheating" for the *players* to do. CaP is focused on what is fair game vs cheating for the *GM* to do.

So, while I can spoof the original "bees" example for CaW and CaS, I cannot do so similarly for CaP, as, afaict, the main question of CaP is whether they would even encounter the bees in the first place.

If they did, would it play out significantly differently than its CaW or CaS counterparts?

Cluedrew
2021-06-16, 07:29 AM
CaW and CaS are about valid responses to the same encounter - what is fair game, and what is "cheating" for the *players* to do. CaP is focused on what is fair game vs cheating for the *GM* to do.No, all four known Combat as X paradigms change how everyone at the table approaches combat GM or not.

Simple example, the GM is expected to make balanced encounters under Combat as Sport, where as in Combat as War if a single combat is unwinnable, well the challenge is figuring that out and then running away.

Xervous
2021-06-16, 07:43 AM
Given my observations of casual gamers and the surge of video game features catering to various casual mindsets I do not believe Talakeal has perfectionists. I believe he has completionists. Where the perfectionist seeks and strives for the best outcomes, the modern completionist has been trained to expect they can accomplish everything just by showing up and putting in the time. This meshes with the notion of combat as performance. They’ve already announced what they expect by making a competent adventurer, and their further expectation is that they’re along for the ride.

KorvinStarmast
2021-06-16, 09:30 AM
Which is why I am asking for feedback.
Letter is too long. You need to trim the heck out of it.

My intended, super blunt TLDR is: Recognize that your decisions impact the game, and that dice rolls provide uncertainty, so stop losing your mind and blaming me / the other players every time anything doesn't go your way; as long as you can work together as a team everything will come out ok.
That is your closing line. Precede it with three to five salient, related points. Otherwise all that you have written is a rant, which means you are talking at your players not to them.


OOC I am expecting this game to go like my previous games, which means it will last~2 years, and during that time there will be only 1 or 2 character deaths, one or two failed missions, zero TPKs, and the players will be about 20% ahead of the curve when it comes to wealth / reputation / success rate. I am not sure what some of your words mean, contextually (wealth, reputation, success rate) but I have a metric that you need to consider; are they going to have fun?

To Talakeal: I have a better question: Why send this? Indeed. In its current form it looks to me like a case of poisoning your own well.

To be kind of blunt, I don't think any open letter that you can pen will resolve this. I agree, but perhaps for a different reason. If the play group includes some volatile players, then the tools to deal with their occasional explosions or outbursts are a thing that the group needs to discuss during session zero particularly when players new to the group are included.

If I am following, I think you may be misunderstanding what debt means in this context. TLDR: seems overly complicated to me. Are your previous players used to this already? Have they bought into this?

One last thing: DM meta gaming, with new, never-met-before enemies explicitly targeting a PC weakness, has been called out by a few others with good reason. I'll tell you again, so that you hear it a different way. It's loaded with DM toxicity the way that you describe it.

DM's who do that consistently are in some ways violating the in-world fiction. Some enemies will learn from interacting with the PCs (if the enemies survive) and some will do a bit of recon ahead of time as the PCs grow in reputation (Who are these people? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses) but some foes will not. And NPCs can't read PC stat sheets. DMs can, but in this sense the DM is a meta construct.

As a DM, if you want some of the enemies to not 'go in cold' during their first encounter with the PCs, you need to build an internally consistent, narratively valid premise based on how the PC's play unfolds overtime to underscore which NPCs and monsters do that intel gathering on the PCs and which ones aren't in a position to.

What your letter tells them isn't that.

Lastly: this letter, as I read it, isn't about agency.
It's about being responsible for their own characters
accepting that their choices have consequences
accepting that the dice are fickle
accepting that bad luck/bad rolls will happen so please understand that losing one's cool over bad luck or a bad roll is unfun for the rest of the group.
And you do touch on the importance of teamwork

There.
I said much of what you had to say in a lot fewer words. Granted, those aren't your words, and they are a summary with a lot of the fat cut out, but I'd strongly suggest that if you intend to send a one pager you perform considerable liposuction on your prose.

So one thing this thread has had me thinking about is the combat as sport/combat as war split, because from your description, I don' think your players really want either. I think they want a third option: combat* as performance. Love your post, thanks! :smallsmile:

Given my observations of casual gamers and the surge of video game features catering to various casual mindsets I do not believe Talakeal has perfectionists. I believe he has completionists. Where the perfectionist seeks and strives for the best outcomes, the modern completionist has been trained to expect they can accomplish everything just by showing up and putting in the time. This meshes with the notion of combat as performance. They’ve already announced what they expect by making a competent adventurer, and their further expectation is that they’re along for the ride. This crystalizes a few things I've seen over the years, but I didn't have the right words for it. I like how you framed that. :smallsmile:

Talakeal
2021-06-16, 11:19 AM
DM's who do that consistently are in some ways violating the in-world fiction. Some enemies will learn from interacting with the PCs (if the enemies survive) and some will do a bit of recon ahead of time as the PCs grow in reputation (Who are these people? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses) but some foes will not. And NPCs can't read PC stat sheets. DMs can, but in this sense the DM is a meta construct.

Yeah, I should add a few words in there to clarify that I am talking about in character tactics, not metagaming.

As I said up thread, in my last game I had a mage call me a cheater for having an orc decide to grapple him, and another player call me a cheater for having a dragon first engage a melee heavy party from the air, when in my mind those are just common sense on the monster's part. I am trying to increase verisimilitude by having competent warriors and predators make basic observations of their foes and react accordingly.


Lastly: this letter, as I read it, isn't about agency.
It's about being responsible for their own characters
accepting that their choices have consequences
accepting that the dice are fickle
accepting that bad luck/bad rolls will happen so please understand that losing one's cool over bad luck or a bad roll is unfun for the rest of the group.
And you do touch on the importance of teamwork


That is, indeed what I was trying to say, yes. Not sure why so many people are reading it as a boast about how many characters I am going to kill, but that wasn't my goal.


Given my observations of casual gamers and the surge of video game features catering to various casual mindsets I do not believe Talakeal has perfectionists. I believe he has completionists. Where the perfectionist seeks and strives for the best outcomes, the modern completionist has been trained to expect they can accomplish everything just by showing up and putting in the time. This meshes with the notion of combat as performance. They’ve already announced what they expect by making a competent adventurer, and their further expectation is that they’re along for the ride.

Hard disagree.

My players would much rather abandon the mission and return to town leaving half the dungeon unexplored if they think there is even a chance it will cost them more gold to complete the mission than they will recover from it.

To me that reeks of perfection but not completion.


Have you considered a change to your wealth system? Seems to me a lot of your problems stems from a 'hoarding wealth' midset. Your players devote every bit of wealth towards their one big thing (even beyond where it will create any returns), and pass on any option that would spend wealth outside of that thing, because they see it as 'costing' them advancement on their one big thing.

Since you already use a 'wealth factor' system rather than counting coins, why not adjust the system to create two wealth pools; the first being like your current use (for long-term multi-adventure projects) and a secondary short-term pool, that is refilled at the conclusion of each adventure, regardless of how much of it was spend prior-to or during the adventure. Since any 'unused' short-term pool is effectively lost, it might encourage expenditure on consumables, hirelings (the things covered by your debts system, so they can purchase a few debts without incurring long-term consequences), or things that aren't part of their one big thing (since the pool gets refilled at the conclusion of each adventure, it isn't "wasting" anything to use it to shore up a weakness). Perhaps even make things spent with the short-term pool vanish after the adventure is completed to prevent them just hoarding consumables instead.

The latest version of WFRP does this (and ties it into its downtime system); and although I don't agree with how that game does it (there is no long-term pool, so the parties wealth gets drained completely prior to every adventure), I can see how the idea in principle might encourage freer spending, and less mindless hoarding.

Yes.

Players absolutely hated the lack of control and felt that it was unrealistic that they couldn't hoard their money.

I am curious to see how WHFRP handled it.


Stop, it really sounds like you are focusing on the "homebrew" and not on the "The forum listened when your players complained to you about 'how the ____ were they supposed to expect the monster could do that!!!!!' when you told us those stories".

Again, I am not trying to be harsh, but if this is you misrepresenting the free advice, AGAIN, then I will be quite frustrated.

I fail to see how any of this is relevant. The advice is:
1) About the complaints your players had. Some random other group on the forum does not have your players with your complaints
2) About the complaints your players had. They did not complain about it being homebrew vs official. Why would it matter if Gold Dragons were official or homebrew?

This really sounds like you are not listening.

Yeah, un huh. That feeling is all your fault. You are not hearing what is being said. If you misrepresent advice then of course you will find the advice to be misrepresented.

Your players had a specific complaint. That complaint did not have to do with official vs homebrew. The forum knows you love to homebrew. So the forum translated their complaint and told you what kind of homebrew would trigger the complaint and what kind of homebrew would not trigger the complaint.

You then when and fallaciously claimed the forum was arguing against homebrew.

I find advice works better when you look at it instead of misrepresent it.
I find someone constantly misrepresenting your advice to be very frustrating.
If you are going to keep this up, then I should go away.

These conversations are going nowhere.

I have had multiple people telling me that any miscommunication that happens on the forum or at the table is my fault, which is absolutely ridiculous. I am not going to claim that I am great at communication, but even if both people are acting in good faith, miscommunication happens all the time on both people's parts; just watch a news pundit summarize something a politician said if you want to see it in action.

If I misunderstand something, I am "not listening" but if someone else misunderstands something I am "not giving enough information," at least if the person I am talking to is being nice, oftentimes they just accuse me of exaggerating, misleading them, or outright lying.


Like, you said my players had a specific complaint. Which complaint was that?

I have said dozens of times that my players got what I was trying to say, and then either forgot what was said or outright ignored me because they assumed I was trying to trick them. And I have one player, who actively prides himself on not caring about the game's lore, who assumes I am just making up monster abilities on the fly anytime they counter his tactics, even when nothing of the sort is happening (for example, he hears making a saving throw and escaping cooling magma before it hardens as me giving the monster the ability to turn incorporeal and phase through solid rock). That goes way beyond "bad at communication" or "lack of foreshadowing".

Chauncymancer
2021-06-16, 11:53 AM
Like, for example, I have never seen a DMG which has alternate CR guidelines for parties who donate all of their magic items to charity and adventure in their skivvies, even though that could be a potential game type.

Book of Exalted Deeds does mention the possibility. I believe Complete Warrior also spent some time discussing an ultra low funds game, but in the form of you not giving them anything to begin with.


Like, I opened up my 3.5 MM to a random page. I got Dragon, Gold. Gold Dragons have two breath weapons, one fire one weakening gas, can take on the form of any human or animal, breath water, receive a luck bonus to saves, can detect gems, can bless, can geas, can sunburst, can cast foresight, and cast spells as a 19th level sorcerer with access to 3 cleric domains. Can you imagine someone on the forum getting the advice that they need to somehow foreshadow all of that to the players before facing one?
If I was running for a group of players who had never experienced a 3.X dragon before, I would definitely think that at least those elements I underlined would need to be foreshadowed ahead of time.

KorvinStarmast
2021-06-16, 11:55 AM
As I said up thread, in my last game I had a mage call me a cheater for having an orc decide to grapple him, and another player call me a cheater for having a dragon first engage a melee heavy party from the air, when in my mind those are just common sense on the monster's part. I am trying to increase verisimilitude by having competent warriors and predators make basic observations of their foes and react accordingly. Most DMs do something similar, with flying creatures. If a player calls me, the GM/DM, a cheater when I have an NPC or monster do something rational, I may

tell them to get a clue,
ask them why they felt it is somehow 'cheating'
point to the door and tell them "I don't get paid to take that from you, good night, come back when you are ready to behave like a decent person"
It really depends on the situation. It also depends on the feedback from the other players.

That is, indeed what I was trying to say, yes. Not sure why so many people are reading it as a boast about how many characters I am going to kill, but that wasn't my goal. Then I'll, once again, recommend that you go back to this proposed letter, perform the previously suggested liposuction, and say it with a lot fewer words and focus on those points. :smallbiggrin:

Hard disagree.
My players would much rather abandon the mission and return to town leaving half the dungeon unexplored if they think there is even a chance it will cost them more gold to complete the mission than they will recover from it. This passage illustrates to me that I don't understand a lot of your homebrewed system, and how wealth/points/value is implemented. With that, I wish you best of luck in having a productive conversation with your players next time. :smallsmile: And maybe not send the letter at all. Just go over those points in person, again, and listen to their responses.

Batcathat
2021-06-16, 12:04 PM
If I was running for a group of players who had never experienced a 3.X dragon before, I would definitely think that at least those elements I underlined would need to be foreshadowed ahead of time.

Personally, I wouldn't necessarily feel like such abilities needed to be foreshadowed but rather that the players won't be completely screwed by their ignorance. A fight turning against the party because they aren't aware that a dragon can cast spells and are forced to flee would be fine by me (whether I was GM or player), the party getting TPK'd under the same circumstances would be understandable grounds to be upset with the GM.

OldTrees1
2021-06-16, 01:16 PM
These conversations are going nowhere.

I have had multiple people telling me that any miscommunication that happens on the forum or at the table is my fault, which is absolutely ridiculous. I am not going to claim that I am great at communication, but even if both people are acting in good faith, miscommunication happens all the time on both people's parts; just watch a news pundit summarize something a politician said if you want to see it in action.

If I misunderstand something, I am "not listening" but if someone else misunderstands something I am "not giving enough information," at least if the person I am talking to is being nice, oftentimes they just accuse me of exaggerating, misleading them, or outright lying.


Like, you said my players had a specific complaint. Which complaint was that?

I have said dozens of times that my players got what I was trying to say, and then either forgot what was said or outright ignored me because they assumed I was trying to trick them. And I have one player, who actively prides himself on not caring about the game's lore, who assumes I am just making up monster abilities on the fly anytime they counter his tactics, even when nothing of the sort is happening (for example, he hears making a saving throw and escaping cooling magma before it hardens as me giving the monster the ability to turn incorporeal and phase through solid rock). That goes way beyond "bad at communication" or "lack of foreshadowing".

Talakeal,
If someone says "Subject Verb Object when Condition" and you decide they said "Subject Verb Object". That is an unforced error on your part.

If someone corrects your misrepresentation and says they said "Subject Verb Object when Condition" with an emphasis on the qualifier being the significant factor, and you insist they only mean "Subject Verb Object". Then you are doubling down on an unforced error.

Yes miscommunication can happen, however a good faith response would be to listen to the correction rather than double down on the unforced error.

Your player had a specific criticism about you "making up the big nose gust of wind ability" and several other examples where they objected to what appeared to be a sudden railroading fudged ability. With the added information from your account the forum learned that the giant already had that ability, but the PC had no way of knowing about it. So the forum suggested you avoid causing this problem in the future.

You decided "oh the forum really just hates homebrew". This is clearly false and unrelated. However despite numerous corrections trying to clear up the miscommunication, you continue to insist this false narrative.


You are right. This is getting nowhere. I like Pasta. I don't like Pasta covered in Tar. Therefore Talakeal will claim I made a contradiction and actually don't like Pasta. Maybe things will be better in the future. Goodbye for now.

Talakeal
2021-06-16, 01:40 PM
Talakeal,
If someone says "Subject Verb Object when Condition" and you decide they said "Subject Verb Object". That is an unforced error on your part.

If someone corrects your misrepresentation and says they said "Subject Verb Object when Condition" with an emphasis on the qualifier being the significant factor, and you insist they only mean "Subject Verb Object". Then you are doubling down on an unforced error.

Yes miscommunication can happen, however a good faith response would be to listen to the correction rather than double down on the unforced error.

Your player had a specific criticism about you "making up the big nose gust of wind ability" and several other examples where they objected to what appeared to be a sudden railroading fudged ability. With the added information from your account the forum learned that the giant already had that ability, but the PC had no way of knowing about it. So the forum suggested you avoid causing this problem in the future.

You decided "oh the forum really just hates homebrew". This is clearly false and unrelated. However despite numerous corrections trying to clear up the miscommunication, you continue to insist this false narrative.


You are right. This is getting nowhere. I like Pasta. I don't like Pasta covered in Tar. Therefore Talakeal will claim I made a contradiction and actually don't like Pasta. Maybe things will be better in the future. Goodbye for now.

I am sorry if I am coming across as unreasonable. I am in a really stressful place in my life right now, and starting a new campaign and having people dog-piling me about miscommunications in three concurrent threads it not helping.

I am not saying people really mean that they hate home-brew, what I am saying is that I feel people have un-examined biases against homebrew that is coloring their advice. Like, if I bring a girl home who is a member of a group my mother doesn't like, she will find all sorts of reasons why she doesn't like the girl as a person, but I will suspect all of these complaints are subconsciously colored by her prejudice.

But yeah, fighting about who was at fault in two year old stories and minutia of internet communication is just getting me stressed out and not helping, but I still value your feedback on the whole.



Although I really, really, do not like this new trend my players are showing of taking something I have said in the past, telling it to a third party in a grossly distorted manner to make me look like a hypocrite or a liar, and then laughing at me. If this continues, I may well actually start giving players the boot.

icefractal
2021-06-16, 01:56 PM
The thing is, my system uses a much more simplified system for wealth and experience than D&D.

By RAW, a character who never does anything but clear the rats out of basements will level up just as fast as anyone else, and though their buying power will be very small, they will be a masterful craftsman as the system does not charge for materials and they will be able to devote near 100% of their resources to crafting, allowing them to create things far better than their adventuring ilk.Somewhat tangential, but I find this confusing in the context of something you said earlier.

Previously, you mentioned that the party could seek out primarily "low risk, low reward" missions, but that you wouldn't recommend it because they'd get behind the curve that way and struggle later.

But if they level up just as fast, and can make up for the lesser rewards with greater crafting, that doesn't seem to be true? Do you actually mean you don't recommend it because it's too good an option? With your current players I definitely wouldn't rely on "gentlemen's agreements", but rather change the system if necessary.

Talakeal
2021-06-16, 02:06 PM
Somewhat tangential, but I find this confusing in the context of something you said earlier.

Previously, you mentioned that the party could seek out primarily "low risk, low reward" missions, but that you wouldn't recommend it because they'd get behind the curve that way and struggle later.

But if they level up just as fast, and can make up for the lesser rewards with greater crafting, that doesn't seem to be true? Do you actually mean you don't recommend it because it's too good an option? With your current players I definitely wouldn't rely on "gentlemen's agreements", but rather change the system if necessary.

Challenge in the game assumes average wealth by level.

Frequent Easy missions will result in a character with lower wealth than their level would indicate.

From a verisimilitude perspective, it doesn’t make sense that a risk averse un-ambitious adventurer who sticks to low level challenges for his whole career would ever develop the skills to become a high level character or be able to afford the materials to craft high end items.


Most DMs do something similar, with flying creatures. If a player calls me, the GM/DM, a cheater when I have an NPC or monster do something rational, I may

tell them to get a clue,
ask them why they felt it is somehow 'cheating'
point to the door and tell them "I don't get paid to take that from you, good night, come back when you are ready to behave like a decent person"
It really depends on the situation. It also depends on the feedback from the other players.
Then I'll, once again, recommend that you go back to this proposed letter, perform the previously suggested liposuction, and say it with a lot fewer words and focus on those points. :smallbiggrin:
This passage illustrates to me that I don't understand a lot of your homebrewed system, and how wealth/points/value is implemented. With that, I wish you best of luck in having a productive conversation with your players next time. :smallsmile: And maybe not send the letter at all. Just go over those points in person, again, and listen to their responses.

Basically, if it looks like the players will need to use potions or other consumables to win out, they will just say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, keep their consumables, and abandon whatever treasure is left in the dungeon.

KorvinStarmast
2021-06-16, 03:21 PM
Basically, if it looks like the players will need to use potions or other consumables to win out, they will just say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, keep their consumables, and abandon whatever treasure is left in the dungeon. Consumables are a curious thing. A lot of parties (to include one where I am a player) seem to have the darnedest time deciding to use a consumable. (Except for healing potions)
Recently, I finally used a bead of force just to remind the other players that we each had one. (We found some in a dragon hoard months ago, and it ended up being one for each party member). I wanted them to see what it could do. None of them really understood what the use was. (Handy as heck if the enemy fails the dex save)

Our dwarf has never blown his horn of valhalla
Our wizard has never, in a year and a half of play, blown his custom horn of 'summoning aid' that the DM custom made for our group.

I could go on, but the hording of consumables is also evident in some of the other groups that I play in.
In other words, you players aren't alone when it comes to their attachment to consumables.

Quertus
2021-06-16, 04:25 PM
No, all four known Combat as X paradigms change how everyone at the table approaches combat GM or not.

Simple example, the GM is expected to make balanced encounters under Combat as Sport, where as in Combat as War if a single combat is unwinnable, well the challenge is figuring that out and then running away.

Touché. Indeed, as a CaW GM, I try and make sure that my players know that it's on them to survive - which is a far cry from the obligation to craft sporting encounters. I mistook the map for the territory (in this case, the "bees" example for the whole of the idea).

So… in CaP, is the onus on the GM to make encounters that allow *anyone* to show off, to allow *these characters* to show off, or to follow through on actions in such a way that they can show off? Where "show off" is defined as "showcase what makes their PC who they are".

Which *still* feels like it's hitting at a different angel, like I could add it (or not) as a tag to either a CaW or CaS game, not as a mutually exclusive radio button list. So… am I still lost?


Hard disagree.

My players would much rather abandon the mission and return to town leaving half the dungeon unexplored if they think there is even a chance it will cost them more gold to complete the mission than they will recover from it.

To me that reeks of perfection but not completion.

That sounds casual ("I'm here, pay me") rather than hard core ("driven to be the best of the best"). Much like the original definitions did.


Personally, I wouldn't necessarily feel like such abilities needed to be foreshadowed but rather that the players won't be completely screwed by their ignorance. A fight turning against the party because they aren't aware that a dragon can cast spells and are forced to flee would be fine by me (whether I was GM or player), the party getting TPK'd under the same circumstances would be understandable grounds to be upset with the GM.

There's a fancy word / phrase for this - something like "outcome-based ethics" - where the exact same action is good or bad is based on a roll of the die / what the final outcome turned out to be.

I'm not sure that I would want to judge the GM's actions by how our party faired. Why would you?


I am sorry if I am coming across as unreasonable. I am in a really stressful place in my life right now, and starting a new campaign and having people dog-piling me about miscommunications in three concurrent threads it not helping.

I am not saying people really mean that they hate home-brew, what I am saying is that I feel people have un-examined biases against homebrew that is coloring their advice.

For the record, I'm a fan of homebrew. I mean, I'm a fan of most things done right - and your doppelganger pretending to be a Vampire is an example of you doing something *very* right, IMO, even if it isn't homebrew - but good homebrew is just really cool. Still, I'm not sure homebrew - as awesome as yours sounds to my ears - is necessarily the right answer for your players, *especially* while certain other problems loom large.

Speaking of, "communication" seems a really big problem in many of your stories and some of your threads - and *one* of your 3(?) current threads (this one, in fact) is all about communication (and, IMO, is *astoundingly* rife with miscommunication from the very first post (which you already knew, because your sane player *told you* what your letter communicated before you even made the thread)).

So I think that everyone dog piling on "communication" *should* help. I think advice on communication is very much something that you need to hear. Why isn't it helping?


Challenge in the game assumes average wealth by level.

Frequent Easy missions will result in a character with lower wealth than their level would indicate.

From a verisimilitude perspective, it doesn’t make sense that a risk averse un-ambitious adventurer who sticks to low level challenges for his whole career would ever develop the skills to become a high level character or be able to afford the materials to craft high end items.

I'm not following. If a group sticks to easier missions, 1) they will earn less gold and XP per mission [fair]; 2) they will earn proportionally less gold than XP [property of your system?]; 3) and will therefore 3a) be outfitted poorly for their level, and thus 3b) be weak for their level, and therefore 3c) be Incentivized to *continue* choosing missions easier than their level would indicate.

However, *assuming* that skill is based on level, they *will* develop the skills of a high level character - which is actually much more realistic to level slowly through extended repetition of the basics than to do so quickly by slaying a Dragon.


Basically, if it looks like the players will need to use potions or other consumables to win out, they will just say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, keep their consumables, and abandon whatever treasure is left in the dungeon.

in a realistic game, they're probably right - those extra coins aren't worth their life. And, in your system, even left over spell slots are fungible assets that must be weighed against the value of continuing. And you've just said in your letter that you won't be keeping them unrealistically alive, so now they're even *more* Incentivized to leave things half finished. Their behavior sounds pretty reasonable in such a context.

EDIT:
the hording of consumables is also evident in some of the other groups that I play in.
In other words, you players aren't alone when it comes to their attachment to consumables.

In one game, my Cleric character got 2 custom items: one was a morphic weapon, the other was a very curious Necklace of Prayer Beads. The Necklace had 20 Beads, which a) were each single-use; b) rolled randomly at the time of use for their effect. Yeah, I saved that for a rainy day (the Cleric summoned his deity while the party was fighting *another* deity. Good times.).

IME, in general, outside a Wand of Lesser Vigor in 3e, players will hoard consumables until "the right moment", and be much happier to end the campaign with the consumable unused than to feel that they "wasted" it. Regardless of whether consumables are fungible / purchasable in the system or not.

Talakeal
2021-06-16, 05:59 PM
Speaking of, "communication" seems a really big problem in many of your stories and some of your threads - and *one* of your 3(?) current threads (this one, in fact) is all about communication (and, IMO, is *astoundingly* rife with miscommunication from the very first post (which you already knew, because your sane player *told you* what your letter communicated before you even made the thread)).

So I think that everyone dog piling on "communication" *should* help. I think advice on communication is very much something that you need to hear. Why isn't it helping?

Well, I tend to get defensive and shutdown when people start using absolute language trying assign blame or tell someone they are objectively wrong. I find conversations where people acknowledge that mistakes were made and are trying to find a solution without assigning blame or trying to negate the other person much more productive.

I was thinking about that the other day, about how phrasing and trying to assign blame makes issues worse. For example, if my player came to me and said "the game is too hard because you are really good at tactics," I would be a lot more open to that than their current strategy of "the game is too hard because you are really bad at balancing encounters," more or less the same thing, but one gets me in defense mode the other does not.

And, funny story, I showed the player my letter again and asked him what part exactly made him think it was me boasting about killing characters, he reread it and said nothing, he was just reading it in that way because last week, when everyone told me their intention to play evil characters, I mentioned something about how I am not going to pull my punches, and if they can't learn to work as a team they will likely all die together, thus it is in even the selfish evil character's best interest not to betray their party.


I'm not following. If a group sticks to easier missions, 1) they will earn less gold and XP per mission [fair]; 2) they will earn proportionally less gold than XP [property of your system?]; 3) and will therefore 3a) be outfitted poorly for their level, and thus 3b) be weak for their level, and therefore 3c) be Incentivized to *continue* choosing missions easier than their level would indicate.

My system actually gives a flat amount of XP per session. So someone who only does easy (or hard) missions is going to be in a wierd place on the wealth curve compared to their level. Which is not an insurmountable fix, its just not something the printed challenge guidelines assume.


However, *assuming* that skill is based on level, they *will* develop the skills of a high level character - which is actually much more realistic to level slowly through extended repetition of the basics than to do so quickly by slaying a Dragon.

IMO truly great people need to push themselves. People who are content to just be good enough rarely become the top of their fields. Of course, in real life long hours and training and genetics have more to do with that than constantly escalating challenges.


in a realistic game, they're probably right - those extra coins aren't worth their life. And, in your system, even left over spell slots are fungible assets that must be weighed against the value of continuing. And you've just said in your letter that you won't be keeping them unrealistically alive, so now they're even *more* Incentivized to leave things half finished. Their behavior sounds pretty reasonable in such a context.

Fortune favors the bold. It might be safer, but you aren't going to ever change the world by not taking risks, and the experience you get from finishing the mission far outweighs the gold.

But OOC we came to have adventures, and if I prep six hours worth of material and you only want to go do two hours and then go to town, that's a lot of wasted prep-time and unused game time.

And, regardless of logic, it still doesn't speak to a completionist mindset, which was my original point.

NichG
2021-06-16, 06:33 PM
There's a fancy word / phrase for this - something like "outcome-based ethics" - where the exact same action is good or bad is based on a roll of the die / what the final outcome turned out to be.

I'm not sure that I would want to judge the GM's actions by how our party faired. Why would you?


It's a sort of responsibility thing here, no? If the GM doesn't know how their players will react to things, they have some responsibility to not create situations where deviating from some predicted sensible behavior will cause the game to crash out. If a GM has a good handle on the kinds of tactics and depth of thinking a given group uses, it can be reasonable for that GM to push closer to the edge of things with that group.

For example, even something simple like having a monster that will wreck you if you step in and take a full attack from it, but is easily kited. If I know players have seen someone get destroyed by a dragon's attack sequence in the past and change their behavior against things that look like the sorts of things with big full attack sequences, then it can be reasonable for me (given a responsibility to avoid TPK or overly severe consequences for individual mistakes) to introduce such a thing in the game. With the exact same group of players but where I don't have that knowledge of how they play, it could be unreasonable for me to make exactly the same decision. And if I had a group of players where I knew they would rather play big gutsy moves and trust the GM to make the consequences more fun than annoying, it'd be pretty bad form for me to introduce such an enemy. Or with a group that I knew was weak on tactics and would tend not to really ever think 'what can this enemy do to me, and what can I do to mitigate that?', similarly bad form if I was acting under a responsibility to avoid one-off severe consequences.

It's sort of like using an orc with a greataxe vs a Lv1 party. With players who aren't careful to control the parameters of the encounter, maybe 90% of the time its fine but 10% of the time the orc one-shot kills a character. With players who use ranged attacks, kiting, and ambushes, then 100% of the time it might be fine. So the action to choose to use such an enemy might be judged differently depending on what kind of group it is, and furthermore how accurately the GM has that group's measure.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-16, 08:07 PM
There's a fancy word / phrase for this - something like "outcome-based ethics" - where the exact same action is good or bad is based on a roll of the die / what the final outcome turned out to be.

I'm not sure that I would want to judge the GM's actions by how our party faired. Why would you?

You're think of consequentialism.

Mixing naive consequentialism with random functions, such a die rolls, is... a headache. The most common way it ends up is a blame-shifting game that concludes with scapegoating either whoever designed or whoever is running the game for even allowing the possibility of the "bad" consequence.

Naive consequentalism is, sadly, de facto moral theory of choice for most roleplaying game discussions, because every time someone tries to approach game design through the question "what would be most fun?", they're being pseudo-utilitarian. :smalltongue:

Talakeal
2021-06-17, 12:13 PM
You're think of consequentialism.

Mixing naive consequentialism with random functions, such a die rolls, is... a headache. The most common way it ends up is a blame-shifting game that concludes with scapegoating either whoever designed or whoever is running the game for even allowing the possibility of the "bad" consequence.

Naive consequentalism is, sadly, de facto moral theory of choice for most roleplaying game discussions, because every time someone tries to approach game design through the question "what would be most fun?", they're being pseudo-utilitarian. :smalltongue:

I once had a weird conversation on this forum where I was complaining about my players claiming they were stuck and giving up even though they had ignored several blatant plot hooks, but because some (not all) of the plot hooks lead to dead ends (but still provided context and lore) then my players made the right decision by ignoring them, even though the players had no way of knowing which hooks would pan out before they started investigating them.

I have also had a lot of people irl take a stupid risk and then say they made a smart decision because they lucked out and it happened to pay off, or people get extremely bitter over bad results that were impossible to predict, for example my friend was once at my house, and I asked him to stay a few minutes later than he was planning on leaving to watch a video, and then on his ride home a deer jumped in front of his car, and he blamed me saying that if he had left three minutes earlier like he planned he never would have encountered the deer.

So yeah, its a pretty common way of looking at the world even if it, to me, doesn't make any logical sense.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-17, 12:47 PM
Consequentalism makes perfect logical sense. If people seem illogical when invoking it, it's because they don't actually want to be consistent consequentialists, as following the logic its end would bring up all the other (https://existentialcomics.com/comic/283) flaws (https://existentialcomics.com/comic/253). :smalltongue:

Glorthindel
2021-06-18, 04:18 AM
Consumables are a curious thing. A lot of parties (to include one where I am a player) seem to have the darnedest time deciding to use a consumable. (Except for healing potions)
Recently, I finally used a bead of force just to remind the other players that we each had one. (We found some in a dragon hoard months ago, and it ended up being one for each party member). I wanted them to see what it could do. None of them really understood what the use was. (Handy as heck if the enemy fails the dex save)

Our dwarf has never blown his horn of valhalla
Our wizard has never, in a year and a half of play, blown his custom horn of 'summoning aid' that the DM custom made for our group.

I could go on, but the hording of consumables is also evident in some of the other groups that I play in.
In other words, you players aren't alone when it comes to their attachment to consumables.

Its the curse of "might need that later", combined with the curse of hindsight - if you use a consumable during an encounter that you win, you are likely going to think that you would have won that encounter without using that consumable, which means you've "wasted" it, and you potentially could lose an encounter in the future where that consumable would have saved you. Its a no-win situation.

Sure, if you have 3-4 healing potions, and you know you average finding 1-2 per adventure, you are likely to be a bit more willing to use one, but if you only have one, which you found five adventures ago, you are going to be more resistannt since you genuinely can't be sure you'll find another before you really need it.

I have the same problem with D&D 5th ed, in that I automatically discount any class ability that only gives you one use per Long Rest, because I know I will likely never find the 'right time' to use it, so it will go unused.



Yes.

Players absolutely hated the lack of control and felt that it was unrealistic that they couldn't hoard their money.

I am curious to see how WHFRP handled it.


As I say, I am not entirely fond of how the new version of WFRP does it, because I think it goes a bit too far, but basically:

Between adventures, players are allowed to take a number of downtime activities - crafting, commissioning items, consulting experts, training off-class skills, working their day job (see later), banking (again, see later), social advancement, etc. At the conclusion of carrying out these activities (and rolling a random event for each character), the characters loses all their money in their pockets. The game says "What happened to it? Its was spent, stolen, drunk, gambled, used for repairs, to pay off debts and taxes, given as a charitable donation, spent on bribes, etc". If the character worked his day job as a downtime action, he then gets some fresh starting funds for the next adventure (his pay), but that's it.

The only way to 'hold' cash between sessions is by the banking downtime activity (and since you only have a limited number of downtime actions, banking (and 'depositing' and 'withdrawing' are seperate actions) every adventure will severely limit your other options), but even that is not guaranteed, as your funds are open to theft or loss due to the bank going under (the chance is variable depending on the method chosen, but there is basically a ~5% per adventure you lose everything, so its gonna happen to someone eventually).

Going back to your system - if you sell the short-term pool in this manner, and perhaps abstract all 'conventional expenses' (food, lodging, drinks, tending for your mounts and pets) into it to explain how and why the pool drains between adventures if not used, you might get away with it. Granted, your players being like they are, they will push back at you, but at the end of the day, it will help simulate something the characters would do that the players likely don't (guess they live their entire lives on the minimum number of the cheapest ration option and only water), and should encourage them to explore consumables (since they will hate losing money by any mechanic, they should go for consumables as a way of avoiding the wastage). And if the consumables themselves 'expire' after a short period (potions/draughts/poultices could be non-magical and made with perishable ingredients to explain this), it will encourage their use rather than it just being a different type of hoarding.

Chauncymancer
2021-06-18, 05:34 PM
So yeah, its a pretty common way of looking at the world even if it, to me, doesn't make any logical sense.

Would you agree that the road to Heaven is paved in good intentions?

Vahnavoi
2021-06-18, 05:40 PM
The common proverb concerns road to Hell, so what does that question even mean?

RandomPeasant
2021-06-18, 08:31 PM
I mean, the road to heaven is probably also paved with good intentions. It's not like you get there by trying to do evil and messing up. But I suspect they either messed up, or were planning some kind of rhetorical bait-and-switch.

Pex
2021-06-18, 09:04 PM
It's not a proverb, but I think the more apt turn of phrase would be "The road to Heaven has many obstacles, but you can find the path."

KorvinStarmast
2021-06-19, 12:49 PM
It's not a proverb, but I think the more apt turn of phrase would be "The road to Heaven has many obstacles, but you can find the path."
I am pretty sure that neither of those allusions tie into the adage about 'the road to hell being paved with good intentions'. My idea is that that phrase comes from a later literary tradition.
When I think of this in D&D terms, or in Chivalry and Sorcery terms, why wouldn't a fiend destroy a whole load of good intentions and use them to pave the road to their demesne where despair and lamentation is the order of the day? :smallcool: Sounds like standard fiendish operations.

GloatingSwine
2021-06-19, 03:18 PM
I am pretty sure that neither of those allusions tie into the adage about 'the road to hell being paved with good intentions'. My idea is that that phrase comes from a later literary tradition.
When I think of this in D&D terms, or in Chivalry and Sorcery terms, why wouldn't a fiend destroy a whole load of good intentions and use them to pave the road to their demesne where despair and lamentation is the order of the day? :smallcool: Sounds like standard fiendish operations.

The standard interpretation of the phrase is that being well meaning doesn't prevent you from doing harm. Lots of harms are done to people "for their own good" after all (many of the strongest real world examples we pretty much can't discuss here).

In D&D terms it would be when a fiend, especially a devil, tricks a well meaning person into going too far down too rigid a path and causing great suffering because of something they didn't think of or dismissed as unimportant.

NichG
2021-06-19, 06:11 PM
Or to put it another way, consequentialism is a bar that other ethics systems have to pass at minimum. If your ethics system continually produces outcomes that would be considered bad under that same system of values, but also says not to change behaviors or beliefs or absolves responsibility in response to observing those outcomes, then its kind of hard to take seriously if it claims 'it would be good if everyone did this!'.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-20, 08:33 AM
Or to put it another way, consequentialism is a bar that other ethics systems have to pass at minimum.

Ha ha - no. You cannot actually evaluate moral systems with different axioms by each other's standards. This applies even to different consequentialist systems with different terminal values. This said, real humans rarely seem to consistently follow a single moral system and tend to naturally fall back to a naive form of consequentialism when other forms of moral thinking do not produce the result they want, so this approach can work for persuading someone on the fence, as long as you don't give them a chance to think about it for too long.

Talakeal
2021-06-20, 09:04 AM
Between adventures, players are allowed to take a number of downtime activities - crafting, commissioning items, consulting experts, training off-class skills, working their day job (see later), banking (again, see later), social advancement, etc. At the conclusion of carrying out these activities (and rolling a random event for each character), the characters loses all their money in their pockets. The game says "What happened to it? Its was spent, stolen, drunk, gambled, used for repairs, to pay off debts and taxes, given as a charitable donation, spent on bribes, etc". If the character worked his day job as a downtime action, he then gets some fresh starting funds for the next adventure (his pay), but that's it.

The only way to 'hold' cash between sessions is by the banking downtime activity (and since you only have a limited number of downtime actions, banking (and 'depositing' and 'withdrawing' are seperate actions) every adventure will severely limit your other options), but even that is not guaranteed, as your funds are open to theft or loss due to the bank going under (the chance is variable depending on the method chosen, but there is basically a ~5% per adventure you lose everything, so its gonna happen to someone eventually).

Going back to your system - if you sell the short-term pool in this manner, and perhaps abstract all 'conventional expenses' (food, lodging, drinks, tending for your mounts and pets) into it to explain how and why the pool drains between adventures if not used, you might get away with it. Granted, your players being like they are, they will push back at you, but at the end of the day, it will help simulate something the characters would do that the players likely don't (guess they live their entire lives on the minimum number of the cheapest ration option and only water), and should encourage them to explore consumables (since they will hate losing money by any mechanic, they should go for consumables as a way of avoiding the wastage). And if the consumables themselves 'expire' after a short period (potions/draughts/poultices could be non-magical and made with perishable ingredients to explain this), it will encourage their use rather than it just being a different type of hoarding.

My system does not charge for supplies, living expenses, repairs, ammunition, or even crafting materials.

Players still couldn’t visualize not being allowed to save up money as anything other than being robbed.

False God
2021-06-20, 09:18 AM
Would you agree that the road to Heaven is paved in good intentions?

No, not really. (and I hope I'm not breaking the rules by engaging in a philosophical discussion over a phrase relating to generic good and evil and not one IRL religion's moral code)

The point of the phrase is that your intentions blind you to the impact of your action. Some of the variations of the phrase clarify that the road to
Heaven, unlike Hell, is is paved with "good works"(as opposed to intentions), "hardships" and so forth. Intention to do good, the desire to do good isn't enough. You have to actually do good. And that's hard, and it's not always clear (as one variation states "The path of sinners is made clear with stones..."), and it's certainly not easy.

I suppose you could argue that you intended to do good, and did therefore the road to heaven is also paved with good intentions, but I think that's going beyond the scope of the phrase. The road to hell is paved with good intentions only, you go from one good intention to the next "made clear with stones" (think stepping stones), each one taking you closer to the Pit, while not actually doing good, instead only focusing on the steps or "stones", that being only your intentions.

Ultimately the phrase is one of selfishness, your intentions and how great you think they are regardless of impact; vs one of selflessness, seeing what good others actually need done to/for them and doing that even if it's not what you want.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-20, 09:43 AM
There's a also a question of causation - spoofed by one of the Existential Comics strips I linked to, but bears elaborating.

When analyzing "Hell is full of well-wishes and desires, while Heaven is full of good works", or any equivalent saying from a consequentialist viewpoint, we are assuming a particular causation: that good works are founded on good results. But what are good results founded on? To paraphrase the comic: "You must teach kids that consequentialism is false. Consequentialism is the ethical framework easiest to use as an excuse for bad behavior. Convincing people that morality is an internal characteristic instead of external result causes them to produce the best external results. Teach your kids that virtue ethics is true.":smalltongue:

Granted, it's an open question if any of that is true.

NichG
2021-06-20, 02:47 PM
Ha ha - no. You cannot actually evaluate moral systems with different axioms by each other's standards. This applies even to different consequentialist systems with different terminal values. This said, real humans rarely seem to consistently follow a single moral system and tend to naturally fall back to a naive form of consequentialism when other forms of moral thinking do not produce the result they want, so this approach can work for persuading someone on the fence, as long as you don't give them a chance to think about it for too long.

This is why I specified outcomes that the ethical system itself considers undesirable. Most ethical systems based on philosophy contain argumentation rather than just being pure value statements.

E.g. something like virtue ethics might say that what matters is the way that people's patterns of behavior create a whole persona, and that individual acts against virtue still change how that person thinks in the gestalt even if there are no consequences. Or the argument might be that people lack the wisdom or knowledge to evaluate consequences correctly, so cultivating virtuous behavior is protective against pride or foolishness. If a system that is about honesty being the most important thing ends up producing a society of liars when that society adopts that ethics system on the whole, that's self-inconsistent, not just a difference of terminal values. If you've got a system of professional ethics like 'do no harm' that ends up causing patients to die untreated when applied as a general principle, then even under that system with the same terminal values it's worth thinking 'did we come up with the correct standards here?'

So those arguments have to survive a basic test of actually working out how they say they will. And ultimately that's the core of consequentialism - 'show me that it is good'. Then when it is extended as a personal form of ethics applied broadly (with each person saying 'I do this because I predict the consequences will be good') it can also end up failing under its own criteria.

OldTrees1
2021-06-20, 04:33 PM
This is why I specified outcomes that the ethical system itself considers undesirable. Most ethical systems based on philosophy contain argumentation rather than just being pure value statements.

This is begging the question. Ethical systems that don't consider consequence to have ethical significance also don't consider consequence to have ethical significance. The charitable interpretation of your claim is: "Consequentialist ethical systems can be evaluated based on their consequentialist aspects." However your literal claim was "Ethical systems, even those without consequentialist aspects, can be evaluated based on their, possibly non existent, consequentialist aspects."

Although, it is fair to note that some ethical systems consider more than one of the intent/action/consequence trio.

NichG
2021-06-20, 05:32 PM
This is begging the question. Ethical systems that don't consider consequence to have ethical significance also don't consider consequence to have ethical significance. The charitable interpretation of your claim is: "Consequentialist ethical systems can be evaluated based on their consequentialist aspects." However your literal claim was "Ethical systems, even those without consequentialist aspects, can be evaluated based on their, possibly non existent, consequentialist aspects."

Although, it is fair to note that some ethical systems consider more than one of the intent/action/consequence trio.

Well again, most philosophical ethical systems have some kind of argumentation underlying them, they're not just statements of e.g. 'I think honesty is good', they're holistic pictures of a world or society or way of life in which honesty is valued which try to be appealing in that whole, or arguments by contrast depicting ways of life in which the thing they claim should be valued is not valued and showing how that might be dysfunctional, or just arguments from logic showing that a system of values which lacks a particular unobvious value might be inconsistent and therefore it must be added or considered alongside the others.

In particular, even the term 'terminal values' used by Vahnavoi acknowledges that much of what makes up ethical systems is about derived values and behaviors coming from those terminal endpoints and following some kind of logical argument. 'Ultimately we care about X, but (100 page argument) therefore we must also consider caring about Y and Z along the way'.

So the point here is to ask for empirical consistency, and recognize that e.g. a D&D Evil character saying 'My fundamental, terminal value is the creation of suffering. My ethical system therefore says that I should create a bunch of businesses, and businesses I create should use attractive wages and benefits to trap people into an eternal loop of gainful employment doing nothing of any meaning, so that they are faced with the inevitable meaningless of their toil and suffer existential breakdown, and I should provide good health coverage so that they suffer this condition as long as possible without the escape of death' and accidentally creating a modern standard of living in a feudal background world is not being very consistent.

Or, since maybe that's too consequentialist to begin with, a CE demon whose ethics is simply 'murder is good' but ends up by circumstance tending to murder other would-be murderers more often than not is having their ethos ironically warped by circumstance.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-20, 05:58 PM
to begin with, a CE demon whose ethics is simply 'murder is good' but ends up by circumstance tending to murder other would-be murderers more often than not is having their ethos ironically warped by circumstance.

Come on now. If it's Chaotic Evil demon, then it's ethics is more likely "me murdering is good". So there's no irony in murdering other murderers, because there is no ethical reason to care about anyone else succeeding in murder. :smalltongue: Though evil ethics being ironically self-defeating would fit in many classic fantasy settings.

This all is a pretty far cry from the point I was making in response to Quertus - namely, that naive consequentialism applied to random results mostly leads to blameshifting games.

OldTrees1
2021-06-20, 06:02 PM
Or, since maybe that's too consequentialist to begin with, a CE demon whose ethics is simply 'murder is good' but ends up by circumstance tending to murder other would-be murderers more often than not is having their ethos ironically warped by circumstance.

If the Demon has an actions based ethic of "Moral Agents should Murder when they have the option" then they don't think it matters whether they murder murderers or non murderers.

If the Demon has a consequence based ethic of "Maximizing the amount of murdering is good" then they absolutely care about avoiding murdering some murderers, but might murder other murderers.

Now I think this tangent originated at someone talking about designing games for people to enjoy? Honestly consequentialism (even though it is not morality based in that context) works well for that.


This all is a pretty far cry from the point I was making in response to Quertus - namely, that naive consequentialism applied to random results mostly leads to blameshifting games.

As usual the naive versions lead to problems. You found better versions which lead to the naive one being labeled as naive. I think you are right that it would lead to blameshifting rather than owning responsibility.

When GMing, I consider all 3 of Intent/Action/Consequence. It deals with a lot of amoral territory but I have terminal values that restrict all 3 areas. I have terminal values about what Intentions I have as a GM. I have terminal values about what Actions I will/won't do as a GM. I have terminal values about creating enough* enjoyment for the players (including myself).

*Outside of ethics or AI research, a good tip for consequentialism is to use a satisficer rather than a maximiser.

NichG
2021-06-20, 07:10 PM
Come on now. If it's Chaotic Evil demon, then it's ethics is more likely "me murdering is good". So there's no irony in murdering other murderers, because there is no ethical reason to care about anyone else succeeding in murder. :smalltongue: Though evil ethics being ironically self-defeating would fit in many classic fantasy settings.


If the Demon has an actions based ethic of "Moral Agents should Murder when they have the option" then they don't think it matters whether they murder murderers or non murderers.

If the Demon has a consequence based ethic of "Maximizing the amount of murdering is good" then they absolutely care about avoiding murdering some murderers, but might murder other murderers.

Now I think this tangent originated at someone talking about designing games for people to enjoy? Honestly consequentialism (even though it is not morality based in that context) works well for that.

I'd say its still pretty ironic, it may just be that the demon doesn't perceive the irony. We could talk about regret and things like that as alternate lenses into this other than eudaemonism (or dysdaemonism I guess), but it's true that it's far off of the original comment.



*Outside of ethics or AI research, a good tip for consequentialism is to use a satisficer rather than a maximiser.

Satisficers are pretty good in AI research too. Having minimal survival criteria rather than fitness maximization helps sustain diverse populations of solutions in evolutionary optimization, for example.

OldTrees1
2021-06-20, 07:22 PM
Satisficers are pretty good in AI research too. Having minimal survival criteria rather than fitness maximization helps sustain diverse populations of solutions in evolutionary optimization, for example.

Despite some education on the topic, I do not know enough about AI safety research for me to safely extend my tip to also apply to AI. So I said nothing on those 2 topics.

Alcore
2021-06-20, 09:43 PM
My system does not charge for supplies, living expenses, repairs, ammunition, or even crafting materials.

Players still couldn’t visualize not being allowed to save up money as anything other than being robbed.

after going through several of your threads and the letter to players at the start of this one I would expect no less just like your players. Don't save up as the DM is out for blood; buy what you can right now and hope to survive another session...

Trafalgar
2021-06-21, 07:50 AM
I looked through Heart of Darkness and its very impressive. Kudos to you! I can't imagine how much time it took you to write that.

Have your players ever played Heart of Darkness before? Were they part of any playtesting for the system? Because that could be part of the problem. If they are not familiar with this new system and you gave them that open letter, I can see why they are upset. If that's the case, I suggest doing a light session or two to familiarize them with the rules and how things work.

Talakeal
2021-06-21, 12:12 PM
I looked through Heart of Darkness and its very impressive. Kudos to you! I can't imagine how much time it took you to write that.

Have your players ever played Heart of Darkness before? Were they part of any playtesting for the system? Because that could be part of the problem. If they are not familiar with this new system and you gave them that open letter, I can see why they are upset. If that's the case, I suggest doing a light session or two to familiarize them with the rules and how things work.

Thanks! I really appreciate it. The original idea for the game was in 98, when I tried adapting the Fallout video game rules and the Dark Tower setting to create a tabletop RPG, and the game kind of morphed into its own thing playing it on and off over the next ten years or so. I actually wrote it out over summer breaks in college from 2009-2013, and have spent the seven years since proofreading, play-testing, commissioning artwork, and saving up money to publish it. Hopefully it will actually be finished soon.


Two of the players are long-term veterans who have been there pretty much since the beginning, two are new players. The problem is that, I think, the two existing players are now cranky old grognards and the new players are taking their eccentricities and bitching as gospel rather than figuring the game out for themselves. It also didn't help that their first game was an experimental hex-crawl variant with a lot house rules.

Which is one of the reasons I wrote this letter, to get them and the new players up to speed on how the base game works, what is to be expected, and how my games usually run free from any past biases.



after going through several of your threads and the letter to players at the start of this one I would expect no less just like your players. Don't save up as the DM is out for blood; buy what you can right now and hope to survive another session...

The system was created to save in book keeping and to make players feel a little less reluctant about buying consumables, it had nothing to do with overall wealth level or difficulty. Not that the flavor text of being robbed vs. cost of living really has any bearing on that one way or the other.

But seriously, I just don't get it.

I haven't had a single player death, let alone a TPK, in the last decade of gaming, the players don't even have to fall back / negotiate a ceasefire except about 1 in 85 fights, but still everyone sees my games as horrifying meat-grinders where its a constant struggle to just survive.

Then I read things like:

http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2021/06/on-monster-conversation.html

or:

http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-story-is-campaign-not-pcs-or-is-d.html

and think that maybe I really do live in Bizarro world.

Morgaln
2021-06-21, 05:04 PM
Thanks! I really appreciate it. The original idea for the game was in 98, when I tried adapting the Fallout video game rules and the Dark Tower setting to create a tabletop RPG, and the game kind of morphed into its own thing playing it on and off over the next ten years or so. I actually wrote it out over summer breaks in college from 2009-2013, and have spent the seven years since proofreading, play-testing, commissioning artwork, and saving up money to publish it. Hopefully it will actually be finished soon.


Two of the players are long-term veterans who have been there pretty much since the beginning, two are new players. The problem is that, I think, the two existing players are now cranky old grognards and the new players are taking their eccentricities and bitching as gospel rather than figuring the game out for themselves. It also didn't help that their first game was an experimental hex-crawl variant with a lot house rules.

Which is one of the reasons I wrote this letter, to get them and the new players up to speed on how the base game works, what is to be expected, and how my games usually run free from any past biases.

The system was created to save in book keeping and to make players feel a little less reluctant about buying consumables, it had nothing to do with overall wealth level or difficulty. Not that the flavor text of being robbed vs. cost of living really has any bearing on that one way or the other.

But seriously, I just don't get it.

I haven't had a single player death, let alone a TPK, in the last decade of gaming, the players don't even have to fall back / negotiate a ceasefire except about 1 in 85 fights, but still everyone sees my games as horrifying meat-grinders where its a constant struggle to just survive.

Then I read things like:

http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2021/06/on-monster-conversation.html

or:

http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-story-is-campaign-not-pcs-or-is-d.html

and think that maybe I really do live in Bizarro world.


After reading through this thread and various others, this is the impression I got (note that this is personal opinion based on a one-sided account of your games, so I might be off).

You and your players have inherently different expectations when gaming. You want to play Dark Souls, where every fight is unique and memorable and the challenge is in finding a tactic that works and having the skill to execute the tactic. This can be incredibly frustrating when you fail again and again, but it is also very rewarding when you finally pull it of. However, I don't think your players want that experience. They want to play Pokemon, where the only challenge is to have a pokemon that can crush the opponent's pokemon, whether through type advantage or through higher level.

I just don't think these styles are compatible in any way; there's really no way to turn Dark Souls into Pokemon without giving up everything that makes a Souls game what it is. Compromising by making failure less severe doesn't help because you're still expecting more tactical thinking and preparation than your players are willing to invest. I think it would be possible to give your players the kind of game they wish for (think: this is a fire gym; you should bring water), but I suspect this would be so far from the game you wish to play that you wouldn't find any enjoyment in it.

Talakeal
2021-06-21, 05:25 PM
After reading through this thread and various others, this is the impression I got (note that this is personal opinion based on a one-sided account of your games, so I might be off).

You and your players have inherently different expectations when gaming. You want to play Dark Souls, where every fight is unique and memorable and the challenge is in finding a tactic that works and having the skill to execute the tactic. This can be incredibly frustrating when you fail again and again, but it is also very rewarding when you finally pull it of. However, I don't think your players want that experience. They want to play Pokemon, where the only challenge is to have a pokemon that can crush the opponent's pokemon, whether through type advantage or through higher level.

I just don't think these styles are compatible in any way; there's really no way to turn Dark Souls into Pokemon without giving up everything that makes a Souls game what it is. Compromising by making failure less severe doesn't help because you're still expecting more tactical thinking and preparation than your players are willing to invest. I think it would be possible to give your players the kind of game they wish for (think: this is a fire gym; you should bring water), but I suspect this would be so far from the game you wish to play that you wouldn't find any enjoyment in it.

The thing is, I think I am defining difficulty different than most people using actual success rate rather than "mental effort".

I don't think my game is much like Dark Souls at all, and is much closer to Pokemon in difficulty.

Looking over my notes, my last game ran every two weeks for two years, average about four combats a night, so ~200 fights. During that time:

The players got beaten up and had to retreat twice (and one of those was a deliberate choice after a horrible miscommunication).
Had two encounters that spooked them and they retreated from before engaging.
Had two encounters that spooked them, but I talked them out of retreating and they had an easy time.
And had eight fights that were close and could have been a TPK if thing's had gone different.

That's a much better win ratio than I have playing Pokemon, let alone Dark Souls.


Of course, also going by my notes, 11 of those sessions that contained no difficult fights or loses still devolved into a huge argument at some point after the players accused me of cheating or didn't like a judgement call I made. As did virtually all of the above.

To me it feels like, to use my pokemon analogy, the players just want to use the same fire type pokemon against everything, and then when they fight a water trainer and almost lose, throw a fit about how much damage their pokemon are taking.

But, again, this may be because the only metrics I have are to judge the results of games rather than some more subjective measure of effort required.

NichG
2021-06-21, 05:37 PM
The thing is, I think I am defining difficulty different than most people using actual success rate rather than "mental effort".

I don't think my game is much like Dark Souls at all, and is much closer to Pokemon in difficulty.

Looking over my notes, my last game ran every two weeks for two years, average about four combats a night, so ~200 fights. During that time:

The players got beaten up and had to retreat twice (and one of those was a deliberate choice after a horrible miscommunication).
Had two encounters that spooked them and they retreated from before engaging.
Had two encounters that spooked them, but I talked them out of retreating and they had an easy time.
And had eight fights that were close and could have been a TPK if thing's had gone different.


That's between 8 and 14 sessions out of 52 with some kind of defeat, failure, or legitimate 'we could have TPK'd on that' experience. Or anything from once in six sessions to once in four. That's fairly frequent. I've been in campaigns with one combat per four sessions, much less one threat of TPK. I've been in campaigns where a player lost a character twice in one night. There isn't some correct standard - everything depends on having players who buy in to what you're offering. The lethality mentioned in the blogposts you linked work for those DMs because they have players who want that experience, not because that's the correct level.

Talakeal
2021-06-21, 05:42 PM
That's between 8 and 14 sessions out of 52 with some kind of defeat, failure, or legitimate 'we could have TPK'd on that' experience. Or anything from once in six sessions to once in four. That's fairly frequent.

Again, there is no real objective way to look at it.

To me, Only having one fight every two or three months where defeat was even a possibility seems very easy when comparing it to anything I can use as a reference point, certainly easier than any game I have ever been a PC in.

Its way easier than Dark Souls, and also easier than Pokemon, heck its probably safer than rep grinding in World of Warcraft (classic).

RandomPeasant
2021-06-21, 07:46 PM
That's a much better win ratio than I have playing Pokemon, let alone Dark Souls.

Well, Dark Souls is famously brutal, so "easier than Dark Souls" is a bit like describing something as "less dangerous than skydiving over an active volcano".

As far as Pokemon goes, you have a very high level of agency over the danger you're in. If you choose to push through content as fast as possible, you'll get stomped down pretty frequently (though the consequences for defeat are all but non-existent). However, if you choose to grind levels on your team, you can steamroll everything, since the story in the main-series games typically ends well below the level cap.


didn't like a judgement call I made

Make less judgement calls. As a DM, you should only be making judgement calls when absolutely necessary for the game to continue, and if they cover something that has even the smallest chance to come up again they should be phrased as "we're going with this so the session doesn't grind to a halt, we'll work out a solution everyone is okay with outside the game". This is triply true of judgement calls that directly impact the players actions or builds.

Talakeal
2021-06-21, 08:09 PM
Well, Dark Souls is famously brutal, so "easier than Dark Souls" is a bit like describing something as "less dangerous than skydiving over an active volcano".

As far as Pokemon goes, you have a very high level of agency over the danger you're in. If you choose to push through content as fast as possible, you'll get stomped down pretty frequently (though the consequences for defeat are all but non-existent). However, if you choose to grind levels on your team, you can steamroll everything, since the story in the main-series games typically ends well below the level cap.

I went with Dark Souls and Pokemon because those are the examples Morgrain chose.


Make less judgement calls. As a DM, you should only be making judgement calls when absolutely necessary for the game to continue, and if they cover something that has even the smallest chance to come up again they should be phrased as "we're going with this so the session doesn't grind to a halt, we'll work out a solution everyone is okay with outside the game". This is triply true of judgement calls that directly impact the players actions or builds.

That's easier said than done. DMing is almost nothing but judgement calls; setting the DCs or various tasks, setting up encounters, and determining how NPCs react to the players are all tasks that require judgement and occur more or less constantly.

Actually making a rules call is somewhat rarer, but still something that is inevitable in any game as complex as an RPG. I can only think of one that actually disrupted my last game though (although it came up on two separate occasions); a literal corner case involving large creatures bull-rushing while moving diagonally.


The lethality mentioned in the blogposts you linked work for those DMs because they have players who want that experience, not because that's the correct level.

Sure, and I don't think that is the correct level or an objective standard at all.

It is just really weird for me to hear phrases about my game like "killer DM" "meat grinder" or "out for blood" when there are games like that out there and I haven't had a single PC fatality since 2009.

NichG
2021-06-21, 08:51 PM
Sure, and I don't think that is the correct level or an objective standard at all.

It is just really weird for me to hear phrases about my game like "killer DM" "meat grinder" or "out for blood" when there are games like that out there and I haven't had a single PC fatality since 2009.

I do think you very, very strongly exhibit a focus on challenge and being challenging. Many of the threads you've posted on game design considerations have to do with 'how to maintain the challenge when doing X' and often when people talk with you about making the game easier, you tend to want to design things to shift the difficulty around rather than actually making things easier. For example, in the discussion about just letting players take under-CR missions, you objected that this would let them reach high level without taking any risk, rather than understanding that 'reaching high level without taking any risk' could actually be a desirable thing.

So even if you're not warming your house at night with fires fueled by the character sheets of the lost, I can absolutely see a player who wants a laid back, stress free game where they can effortlessly dominate popcorn mobs saying something like 'Talakeal won't give us a break or let us get a breath, and whenever we find some way to make things easy for ourselves Talakeal changes the system to shut it down' or 'no matter how much we complain, Talakeal won't lower the difficulty below a TPK-risking fight once every four sessions, even when we outright say we don't want that'. That wouldn't be a mis-representation of your position, given how you yourself have represented your position.

Talakeal
2021-06-21, 09:52 PM
For example, in the discussion about just letting players take under-CR missions, you objected that this would let them reach high level without taking any risk, rather than understanding that 'reaching high level without taking any risk' could actually be a desirable thing.

I don't think I actually said that. It might be true, I don't know I would have to ponder it, but I don't think I said that.

What I have said is that the game would be pretty boring because dice rolls and tactical / strategic decisions don't really matter in the end, and it would take a long time to get anywhere. And that it is hard to maintain verisimilitude in a world where everyone but the PCs are incompetent, but I don't think I have ever said that you shouldn't be able to get to high level without risk. I can't be positive though, I have said a lot of stuff over the years.

I did say that I didn't advise taking lots of high risk missions because eventually your luck will likely run out and you will die, which one might infer to imply the opposite though.



So even if you're not warming your house at night with fires fueled by the character sheets of the lost, I can absolutely see a player who wants a laid back, stress free game where they can effortlessly dominate popcorn mobs saying something like 'Talakeal won't give us a break or let us get a breath, and whenever we find some way to make things easy for ourselves Talakeal changes the system to shut it down' or 'no matter how much we complain, Talakeal won't lower the difficulty below a TPK-risking fight once every four sessions, even when we outright say we don't want that'. That wouldn't be a mis-representation of your position, given how you yourself have represented your position.

The thing is, they don't outright say they don't want challenging encounters.

They say things like "You are too stingy with treasure," or "We don't like using consumables," or "We have to be overly cautious because we don't want characters to die," or "random encounter tables are to random," or "grappling is cheating," or just explode when they lose a fight. I try and address these concerns, it never works, and when I go to the forum for advice people tell me that they players are actually saying the game is too hard without saying it.

NichG
2021-06-21, 10:25 PM
I don't think I actually said that. It might be true, I don't know I would have to ponder it, but I don't think I said that.

What I have said is that the game would be pretty boring because dice rolls and tactical / strategic decisions don't really matter in the end, and it would take a long time to get anywhere. And that it is hard to maintain verisimilitude in a world where everyone but the PCs are incompetent, but I don't think I have ever said that you shouldn't be able to get to high level without risk. I can't be positive though, I have said a lot of stuff over the years.

You didn't engage in the idea of maybe running that low risk game. Instead, you came up with a bunch of reasons - ultimately challenge related, and suggesting that maintaining a level of player challenge was fundamental to you - why you wouldn't like that. When the original point was about what the players might want or like, not what you would like. Similarly the discussions about the wealth curve, or when Quertus suggested giving the players 5x as many resources as you had designed for. Your concerns were keeping to a particular challenge or balance level that you intended, rather than engaging with the idea of, y'know, not actually running at the challenge level that you prefer or expect as a player.

And when it's come down to it, your ultimate line tends to be that you couldn't see yourself enjoying running an un-challenging game.

So I think its very clear that you find challenge essential to the exercise. If you have players who find not being challenged essential to their enjoyment, you are not going to get along.



The thing is, they don't outright say they don't want challenging encounters.

They say things like "You are too stingy with treasure," or "We don't like using consumables," or "We have to be overly cautious because we don't want characters to die," or "random encounter tables are to random," or "grappling is cheating," or just explode when they lose a fight. I try and address these concerns, it never works, and when I go to the forum for advice people tell me that they players are actually saying the game is too hard without saying it.

Yes, or that the amount of effort and responsibility for decisions that you're expecting from them is not something they want to give.

Talakeal
2021-06-22, 11:39 AM
You didn't engage in the idea of maybe running that low risk game. Instead, you came up with a bunch of reasons - ultimately challenge related, and suggesting that maintaining a level of player challenge was fundamental to you - why you wouldn't like that. When the original point was about what the players might want or like, not what you would like. Similarly the discussions about the wealth curve, or when Quertus suggested giving the players 5x as many resources as you had designed for. Your concerns were keeping to a particular challenge or balance level that you intended, rather than engaging with the idea of, y'know, not actually running at the challenge level that you prefer or expect as a player.

And when it's come down to it, your ultimate line tends to be that you couldn't see yourself enjoying running an un-challenging game.

So I think its very clear that you find challenge essential to the exercise. If you have players who find not being challenged essential to their enjoyment, you are not going to get along.



Yes, or that the amount of effort and responsibility for decisions that you're expecting from them is not something they want to give.

Do note that the current chain of replies is in response to:


after going through several of your threads and the letter to players at the start of this one I would expect no less just like your players. Don't save up as the DM is out for blood; buy what you can right now and hope to survive another session...

Which, to me, is pretty clearly making the association that everything I do is about killing player characters.


That being said, I guess it really depends on how broadly you want to define challenge.

A political game which requires a lot of thought and planning on the part of the players and serious ramifications for society based on their actions, a dungeon crawl full of save or die traps and cheap deaths, and a wargame where you fight lots of enemies above your CR, and a murder mystery with very obscure clues, are all "challenging" but in very different ways.


I have had a lot of complaining players over the years, but complaints about too frequent PC deaths or too hard combat haven't really been among them. Mostly, its about playing NPCs too smart, players plans having unintended consequences, or players getting frustrated and giving up to an obstacle when their first solution doesn't work.

One of my old friends once, long ago, said he could no longer enjoy RPGs after he "glimpsed behind the veil" and realized that, while DMs pretend that they want to win, they actually don't like the disruption to the game caused by PC death and defeat and will fudge to keep a PC alive as it keeps the game on rails.

I think something similar may have happened here, I was trying to get my system to do a hex-crawl that it wasn't really designed to handle, there was no time pressure stopping the players from resting whenever they liked, and PC death was not on the table, and the players realized that while the game was nominally about killing monsters and getting treasure, it was more efficient to game the system by getting rich using trade-skills in town and that the monster killing was just an inconvenience.

So, in essence, the focus on challenge and resource management in the last game is, IMO, less about actual challenge, but more about a mismatch between me wanting a game about exploration and adventure and the players wanting a game about becoming rich and powerful by the most direct means possible, and me failing to design rules that would sync up those desires so that exploration and adventure were the most efficient way to become rich and powerful.

And, as a result, many of my forum posts from the last two years have been about dealing with that mismatch that didn't previously exist.

NichG
2021-06-22, 01:32 PM
Do note that the current chain of replies is in response to:

Which, to me, is pretty clearly making the association that everything I do is about killing player characters.

...

I have had a lot of complaining players over the years, but complaints about too frequent PC deaths or too hard combat haven't really been among them. Mostly, its about playing NPCs too smart, players plans having unintended consequences, or players getting frustrated and giving up to an obstacle when their first solution doesn't work.


At the very start of this thread, you quoted one of your players responding to your letter as coming across as "I am hardcore, and I play to win! You will all die, and when you do don't come crying to me like a bitch!"
You've also talked about older players poisoning newer ones by, in your view, misrepresenting your game, e.g. in your second post in this thread: "... and to this day my players tell people that I will "kill their characters and then laugh in their face about it"."
Also: "When they tell a gaming story, its always "Talakeal killed / screwed over my character", never a neutral "my character died / failed" or even an IC "The dragon killed / defeated my PC", let alone an admission that their own decisions played any part in it."
And: "Recently, mechanical issues have been the forefront of this. If they die, it is never because they made a reckless decision or had bad dice rolls, its because I either chose to kill them or didn't balance the encounter."

Those are complaints about deaths and hard encounters.

But ultimately, I do think its not specifically about death, but about challenge. Challenge is essential to you to the extent that you've several times said you can't envision how to even run games that aren't challenging. E.g. in this thread you wrote:

"I legitimately don't know how to make the game easier, especially in a way that is still interesting for me, without turning the world into an infomercial style farce where everyone is totally inept except for the PCs and / or an unsustainable Monte Hall campaign where PC power increases at an exponential rate."

And your letter itself was all about the different ways players could be expected to be challenged or have to deal with difficulty.

So I think you have difficulty seeing and structuring games in ways that aren't about challenging players. And your fear of giving lots of meta information being seen as making decisions for players prevents you from making games which are challenging only for the characters and not for their players.

Talakeal
2021-06-22, 02:00 PM
At the very start of this thread, you quoted one of your players responding to your letter as coming across as "I am hardcore, and I play to win! You will all die, and when you do don't come crying to me like a bitch!"
You've also talked about older players poisoning newer ones by, in your view, misrepresenting your game, e.g. in your second post in this thread: "... and to this day my players tell people that I will "kill their characters and then laugh in their face about it"."
Also: "When they tell a gaming story, its always "Talakeal killed / screwed over my character", never a neutral "my character died / failed" or even an IC "The dragon killed / defeated my PC", let alone an admission that their own decisions played any part in it."
And: "Recently, mechanical issues have been the forefront of this. If they die, it is never because they made a reckless decision or had bad dice rolls, its because I either chose to kill them or didn't balance the encounter."

Those are complaints about deaths and hard encounters.

But ultimately, I do think its not specifically about death, but about challenge. Challenge is essential to you to the extent that you've several times said you can't envision how to even run games that aren't challenging. E.g. in this thread you wrote:

"I legitimately don't know how to make the game easier, especially in a way that is still interesting for me, without turning the world into an infomercial style farce where everyone is totally inept except for the PCs and / or an unsustainable Monte Hall campaign where PC power increases at an exponential rate."

And your letter itself was all about the different ways players could be expected to be challenged or have to deal with difficulty.

So I think you have difficulty seeing and structuring games in ways that aren't about challenging players. And your fear of giving lots of meta information being seen as making decisions for players prevents you from making games which are challenging only for the characters and not for their players.

I fully agree with all of this.

The thing is, it is really confusing me why it is suddenly a huge issue.

I have been running games for the same players for decades. They have completed hundreds of missions, leveled dozens of characters to max level, gotten rich, saved worlds, defeated demons and dragons and liches, overthrown and established empires, and even usurped gods.

They know that they will only fail about one mission a year and will never fall behind WBL. They know that I follow the encounter building rules from the 3.0 dmg. They know TPKs are all but unheard of and that nobody has lost a character in my games for over a decade (and even before that it is still only once every year or two).

Yet, for some reason they are suddenly telling the new players all sorts of horror stories about how dangerous my game is and how I just love killing characters, and bringing up decades old stories over which they still hold a grudge.

And any time something bad happens to their characters or they group has a close call, I have to endure a paranoid lecture about how I am put to get them.


I haven’t changed my DMing style, so I really don’t know where this is coming from. The purpose of me writing this letter is trying to give the players a realistic perspective of what the game entails rather than some old school DM vs players meat-grinder right out of Knights of the Dinner Table like my players are describing.

BRC
2021-06-22, 02:10 PM
I think something similar may have happened here, I was trying to get my system to do a hex-crawl that it wasn't really designed to handle, there was no time pressure stopping the players from resting whenever they liked, and PC death was not on the table, and the players realized that while the game was nominally about killing monsters and getting treasure, it was more efficient to game the system by getting rich using trade-skills in town and that the monster killing was just an inconvenience.

So, in essence, the focus on challenge and resource management in the last game is, IMO, less about actual challenge, but more about a mismatch between me wanting a game about exploration and adventure and the players wanting a game about becoming rich and powerful by the most direct means possible, and me failing to design rules that would sync up those desires so that exploration and adventure were the most efficient way to become rich and powerful.

And, as a result, many of my forum posts from the last two years have been about dealing with that mismatch that didn't previously exist.

It sounds like it's important to interrogate what your players want out of a game.

It sounds like what your players are craving is a steady sense of progression, of gaining power, as represented by Treasure.



The thing is, they don't outright say they don't want challenging encounters.

They say things like "You are too stingy with treasure," or "We don't like using consumables," or "We have to be overly cautious because we don't want characters to die," or "random encounter tables are to random," or "grappling is cheating," or just explode when they lose a fight. I try and address these concerns, it never works, and when I go to the forum for advice people tell me that they players are actually saying the game is too hard without saying it.
That's part of the issue, Players are often not honest with themselves about what they want, and even if they are they won't often admit "Yeah, I want you to spoon-feed me a bunch of easy encounters with guaranteed victories". Nobody wants to say that they're not up to the challenge of the game, they want to say that the game wasn't fair.

This partially comes down to the system you're running. The best systems do a sort of psychological slight-of-hand, putting enough buffer layers between "Things go kind of bad" and "Absolute failure state" that it remains a possibility, but a remote one that's easy for a GM to steer around.

(For example, in D&D 5e, once you hit 0 HP, there's a less than 50% chance of actually failing a death save, and you have to do that three times. It's easy enough to not have enemies target downed PCs, and a single point of healing gets you back on your feet.)
Once your players get used to that, they can feel the thrill of danger (Going down is bad!) While remaining comfortable enough with the idea that they'll avoid the Failure State that they're willing to take risks.

That said, it's probably important to take some measure of what your players want out of things.

"You are too stingy with the treasure" probably means "The players want a more impactful sense of progression and achievement". Get a sense of what sort of progression and achievement they want? Do they want plot and story progression? Increase in power? Treasure as a means of tracking Points?

"We don't like using consumables" yet to meet a player that does. Using consumables feels bad, so the reward for using them needs to feel even better. Also, IME players sometimes just forget about the vertiable arsenal of consumable items they have stocked.
"We have to be overly cautious because we don't want characters to die" can mean a lot of things. What it usually means is that the system rewards tedious caution over more fun behavior. This one is hard to fix, since it comes down to trust between your players and the GM, that the GM will give them leeway for "Your characters would have thought of/done that, even if you don't explicitly call it out", as well as a helping handful of "I'm not going to punish you for minor negligence" and "You're big-time adventuring Badasses".

"Random encounter tables are too random" With them there, I hate random encounter tables. They can make a decent start to things as a jumping off point, but there's little that takes me out of a game like "Math rocks say six orcs attack you".

"grappling is cheating" you mentioned this one. Sounds like a player problem TBH, but being rendered powerless, even if it's by a weakness you were informed of, is never fun. When designing encounters think "What's the benefit of this", if you're building grapplers to exploit a PC's weakness to grappling, that's valid, but probably not fun for anybody, unless the threat is obvious, and the players are coordinated enough to make that a tactical challenge (Protect the Caster from the orcish luchadores).

NichG
2021-06-22, 02:14 PM
I fully agree with all of this.

The thing is, it is really confusing me why it is suddenly a huge issue.

I have been running games for the same players for decades. They have completed hundreds of missions, leveled dozens of characters to max level, gotten rich, saved worlds, defeated demons and dragons and liches, overthrown and established empires, and even usurped gods.

They know that they will only fail about one mission a year and will never fall behind WBL. They know that I follow the encounter building rules from the 3.0 dmg. They know TPKs are all but unheard of and that nobody has lost a character in my games for over a decade (and even before that it is still only once every year or two).

Yet, for some reason they are suddenly telling the new players all sorts of horror stories about how dangerous my game is and how I just love killing characters, and bringing up decades old stories over which they still hold a grudge.

And any time something bad happens to their characters or they group has a close call, I have to endure a paranoid lecture about how I am put to get them.

I haven’t changed my DMing style, so I really don’t know where this is coming from. The purpose of me writing this letter is trying to give the players a realistic perspective of what the game entails rather than some old school DM vs players meat-grinder right out of Knights of the Dinner Table like my players are describing.

It doesn't sound at all new to me, you've been posting bizarro-world threads for something like a decade now, no? This all seems like just more of the same, not a sudden huge issue. The particular way that things are being phrased might have shifted, but the underlying lack of trust and listening to each-other and the overall abusive relationship between you and the two players in particular is something that has been discussed on previous threads.

GloatingSwine
2021-06-22, 02:16 PM
I recall you saying you pitch your missions to consume about 80% of the party's resources. They would probably be more comfortable at about 65%, they'll still feel like they had to try because they dipped under half but they won't feel like doing a few things wrong would have binned the whole thing.

Quertus
2021-06-22, 03:53 PM
The best systems do a sort of psychological slight-of-hand, putting enough buffer layers between "Things go kind of bad" and "Absolute failure state" that it remains a possibility, but a remote one that's easy for a GM to steer around.

I want to focus on an important aspect of this: when you set the party up with puzzles monsters, it's not *the system*, it's not *themselves*, it's *you* that they will blame when they cannot get the puzzle.

And now, Talakeal, they've got years or decades of Pavlovian training to blame you.

This is one of the reasons why my current "5-point plan" involves focusing on these puzzles, on removing this conditioned response to blame you for things that humans cannot reasonably be expected to blame anyone else for.


It doesn't sound at all new to me, you've been posting bizarro-world threads for something like a decade now, no? This all seems like just more of the same, not a sudden huge issue. The particular way that things are being phrased might have shifted, but the underlying lack of trust and listening to each-other and the overall abusive relationship between you and the two players in particular is something that has been discussed on previous threads.

I'll second this. It's not anything new, it's just that your players have gotten better, more experienced (or just more desperate) about communication.

Talakeal
2021-06-22, 03:58 PM
I recall you saying you pitch your missions to consume about 80% of the party's resources. They would probably be more comfortable at about 65%, they'll still feel like they had to try because they dipped under half but they won't feel like doing a few things wrong would have binned the whole thing.

I actually did try that once.

The problem was that it created a "wealth spiral" where the players kept getting further and further ahead of the curve, making each mission easier than the last until it became impossible for me to adhere to any objective standards of balance or to present any situation that was dangerous or threatening without it being completely overwhelming.

If I could actually figure out conclusively that this was what my players problem with the game was, I could probably re-balance the system around it though.


It doesn't sound at all new to me, you've been posting bizarro-world threads for something like a decade now, no? This all seems like just more of the same, not a sudden huge issue. The particular way that things are being phrased might have shifted, but the underlying lack of trust and listening to each-other and the overall abusive relationship between you and the two players in particular is something that has been discussed on previous threads.

Yeah. True.

Its just that I am still trying to solve the surface issues and figure out what the underlying issues are, and when someone says something like "You're players are right, you are a killer DM, if you stop trying to kill characters your problems will be over," it throws me for a loop and puts me on the defensive.


It sounds like it's important to interrogate what your players want out of a game.

It sounds like what your players are craving is a steady sense of progression, of gaining power, as represented by Treasure.

That's part of the issue, Players are often not honest with themselves about what they want, and even if they are they won't often admit "Yeah, I want you to spoon-feed me a bunch of easy encounters with guaranteed victories". Nobody wants to say that they're not up to the challenge of the game, they want to say that the game wasn't fair.

This partially comes down to the system you're running. The best systems do a sort of psychological slight-of-hand, putting enough buffer layers between "Things go kind of bad" and "Absolute failure state" that it remains a possibility, but a remote one that's easy for a GM to steer around.

(For example, in D&D 5e, once you hit 0 HP, there's a less than 50% chance of actually failing a death save, and you have to do that three times. It's easy enough to not have enemies target downed PCs, and a single point of healing gets you back on your feet.)
Once your players get used to that, they can feel the thrill of danger (Going down is bad!) While remaining comfortable enough with the idea that they'll avoid the Failure State that they're willing to take risks.

That said, it's probably important to take some measure of what your players want out of things.

"You are too stingy with the treasure" probably means "The players want a more impactful sense of progression and achievement". Get a sense of what sort of progression and achievement they want? Do they want plot and story progression? Increase in power? Treasure as a means of tracking Points?

"We don't like using consumables" yet to meet a player that does. Using consumables feels bad, so the reward for using them needs to feel even better. Also, IME players sometimes just forget about the vertiable arsenal of consumable items they have stocked.

"We have to be overly cautious because we don't want characters to die" can mean a lot of things. What it usually means is that the system rewards tedious caution over more fun behavior. This one is hard to fix, since it comes down to trust between your players and the GM, that the GM will give them leeway for "Your characters would have thought of/done that, even if you don't explicitly call it out", as well as a helping handful of "I'm not going to punish you for minor negligence" and "You're big-time adventuring Badasses".

"Random encounter tables are too random" With them there, I hate random encounter tables. They can make a decent start to things as a jumping off point, but there's little that takes me out of a game like "Math rocks say six orcs attack you".

"grappling is cheating" you mentioned this one. Sounds like a player problem TBH, but being rendered powerless, even if it's by a weakness you were informed of, is never fun. When designing encounters think "What's the benefit of this", if you're building grapplers to exploit a PC's weakness to grappling, that's valid, but probably not fun for anybody, unless the threat is obvious, and the players are coordinated enough to make that a tactical challenge (Protect the Caster from the orcish luchadores).

I tried to do almost everything you suggest in the last game, and almost all of it made the situation worse.

The spoon-fed vs. unfair analogy is, imo, spot on.

As for the grappling thing, it wasn't that I was designing encounters to foil the PCs, its just that it was such a glaring weakness of his character that exploiting it was just common sense. He was basically playing the character from Firestarter, a small child with incredible pyrokinetic powers.
There were two times it involved the player blowing up and accusing me of cheating, one was almost exactly your orish luchadores, an arena fight against hobgoblin gladiators whom she was blowing up with ease, and so their leader decided to try and wrestle her spellbook and wand away from her and gag her mouth to stop her from casting.
The second time the party had a random encounter against a dire wolf whom the grossly out leveled, and I decided that, being a predator, it would try and snatch the smallest member of the group and run away with her, just like a real predator would when confronted with a large herd of prey animals.

NichG
2021-06-22, 04:05 PM
I actually did try that once.

The problem was that it created a "wealth spiral" where the players kept getting further and further ahead of the curve, making each mission easier than the last until it became impossible for me to adhere to any objective standards of balance or to present any situation that was dangerous or threatening without it being completely overwhelming.

If I could actually figure out conclusively that this was what my players problem with the game was, I could probably re-balance the system around it though.


So this is again I think your blind spot.

What if having that wealth spiral where each mission becomes easier than the last is what your players actually want? What if trying to adhere to 'any objective standards of balance' or 'presenting any situation that was dangerous or threatening' is actually their problem with the game. Then whenever you change the rules to return to what you see as balance, the players are going to see that as you taking away the toys that they went through all of the stuff they didn't like in order to earn.

RandomPeasant
2021-06-22, 04:29 PM
What if having that wealth spiral where each mission becomes easier than the last is what your players actually want? What if trying to adhere to 'any objective standards of balance' or 'presenting any situation that was dangerous or threatening' is actually their problem with the game.

It's worth noting that this is how a lot of games work out in practice. In Pokemon, even if you do lose a fight, the consequences of that are pretty trivial. You teleport back to a safe place, lose a small amount of money (and money is almost never a constraint), and nothing else happens. Unless you got completely clean-swept by whatever you were fighting, you even gained some XP that will make future battles easier. This is the pattern for a lot of games. If you die while running AQ40 in Classic WoW, C'Thun doesn't rise up and smother the world in a tide of madness, you just lose some gold for gear repair. "Death with meaningful risk of lasting failure" is very rare in games, and places where it happens are frequently considered to be excessively hard by the average player.

Talakeal
2021-06-22, 04:32 PM
So this is again I think your blind spot.

What if having that wealth spiral where each mission becomes easier than the last is what your players actually want? What if trying to adhere to 'any objective standards of balance' or 'presenting any situation that was dangerous or threatening' is actually their problem with the game. Then whenever you change the rules to return to what you see as balance, the players are going to see that as you taking away the toys that they went through all of the stuff they didn't like in order to earn.

Maybe so.

But its really hard for me to take a game seriously where it is literally impossible to fail or for me to take a setting seriously where nobody can be competent except for the PCs.

Also, I think I only have one player who really enjoys that style of play, afaict the rest might be as bored by that game as I was.

GloatingSwine
2021-06-22, 04:44 PM
I actually did try that once.

The problem was that it created a "wealth spiral" where the players kept getting further and further ahead of the curve, making each mission easier than the last until it became impossible for me to adhere to any objective standards of balance or to present any situation that was dangerous or threatening without it being completely overwhelming.

If I could actually figure out conclusively that this was what my players problem with the game was, I could probably re-balance the system around it though.


Did they enjoy it?

If they did, then iterate on it.

I think the wealth curve and dealing with wealth is possibly one of the chafing points in your system*. It's hard to tell without a play example of how to use wealth in practice at the ranges of buying a brass knuckle (value 2) vs buying a train (value 50), but it appears that the Value range for ownable things is quite compressed. So the problem may not be that at 65% resource usage the players get too rich too fast, but that the expensive stuff is too cheap. (Wealth progression seems to be linear since gambling always shifts you up or down by 1).

A more exponential cost curve for big shiny objects that let the players do big shiny things (with appropriate opportunities to play with them occasionally without owning them) would alleviate that, and let the players feel like they were under less pressure all the time without their resources exploding.

The downside is that without specific intervention letting them perform significant wealth jumps they will feel like they stagnate in the mid-curve, so putting some kind of "go for broke" option in where they can jump up to the next tier of interesting stuff but only if they succeed in a more difficult than usual scenario would be useful, but that's kind of in the purview of the GM to offer when the players are ready to do it.


* Your players have said they want to "save up" for things, and that's because saving up for a shiny or needful thing is a relatively normal part of the day to day experience of money for the vast majority of us, so it would be good if your system allowed for it but with the compressed price curve you are possibly shying away because it would allow too much of a jump at once.

NichG
2021-06-22, 04:55 PM
Maybe so.

But its really hard for me to take a game seriously where it is literally impossible to fail or for me to take a setting seriously where nobody can be competent except for the PCs.

Also, I think I only have one player who really enjoys that style of play, afaict the rest might be as bored by that game as I was.

It is entirely reasonable to end up with a conclusion "I can't give you what you want" or "I need this thing you hate in order to enjoy a game" or "No matter what you say, this is my line, do you still want to play?". Workable compromise may or may not be possible.

But to progress to that, the first step is to be able to acknowledge the wants and needs of everyone at the table as real, even (especially) when they're alien to your own.

It's a lot better to say to someone 'you know, if you're looking for victory laps and power fantasies, my games don't really go that way. It's up to you if that means you don't want to play, but I won't be making adjustments in those directions' than to pretend that adjustments you make which dance around that issue are addressing it and that there's something wrong with them for still complaining.

If you can recognize and accept that you are always going to give them a game with certain elements they dislike, then you have a position where you can say that to them and ask them to make a choice and stick with it.

But trying to meet the literal interpretation of what they say shallowly while designing the system to twist that to avoid what they're actually asking for is just going to make things worse. That would definitely engender that 'The DM is out to get us/trick us' feeling.

Talakeal
2021-06-22, 06:29 PM
Did they enjoy it?

If they did, then iterate on it.

No more or less than any other game iirc.

Then one of the PCs died and the player threw such a fit it killed the game. This was actually the last PC death to have occured in my game, almost exactly ten years ago, and the same one the player was bitching about to the new players that indirectly prompted this thread.


I think the wealth curve and dealing with wealth is possibly one of the chafing points in your system*. It's hard to tell without a play example of how to use wealth in practice at the ranges of buying a brass knuckle (value 2) vs buying a train (value 50), but it appears that the Value range for ownable things is quite compressed. So the problem may not be that at 65% resource usage the players get too rich too fast, but that the expensive stuff is too cheap. (Wealth progression seems to be linear since gambling always shifts you up or down by 1).

A more exponential cost curve for big shiny objects that let the players do big shiny things (with appropriate opportunities to play with them occasionally without owning them) would alleviate that, and let the players feel like they were under less pressure all the time without their resources exploding.

The downside is that without specific intervention letting them perform significant wealth jumps they will feel like they stagnate in the mid-curve, so putting some kind of "go for broke" option in where they can jump up to the next tier of interesting stuff but only if they succeed in a more difficult than usual scenario would be useful, but that's kind of in the purview of the GM to offer when the players are ready to do it.


* Your players have said they want to "save up" for things, and that's because saving up for a shiny or needful thing is a relatively normal part of the day to day experience of money for the vast majority of us, so it would be good if your system allowed for it but with the compressed price curve you are possibly shying away because it would allow too much of a jump at once.

Thanks for taking the time to look at the system.

The current play-test version on my site is actually undergoing a bit of a revision right now to smooth over the wealth system, so this might not map perfectly to what you read.

You multiply an item's value by ten for each level of quality; so the brass knuckles that cost to are base level, +1 are 20, +2 are 200, +3 2,000 etc.

Consumables are meant to serve as a small buffer against bad luck, but shouldn't really be a huge expenditure.

What happened last game to throw everything all weird was that one player was devoting all of his wealth toward buying one item that was two full tiers beyond what was expected for a character of her level, and so she refused to buy any consumables or other items, instead hoarding money for something she will never reasonably be able to afford and complaining about the increased difficulty that corresponded.



It is entirely reasonable to end up with a conclusion "I can't give you what you want" or "I need this thing you hate in order to enjoy a game" or "No matter what you say, this is my line, do you still want to play?". Workable compromise may or may not be possible.

But to progress to that, the first step is to be able to acknowledge the wants and needs of everyone at the table as real, even (especially) when they're alien to your own.

It's a lot better to say to someone 'you know, if you're looking for victory laps and power fantasies, my games don't really go that way. It's up to you if that means you don't want to play, but I won't be making adjustments in those directions' than to pretend that adjustments you make which dance around that issue are addressing it and that there's something wrong with them for still complaining.

If you can recognize and accept that you are always going to give them a game with certain elements they dislike, then you have a position where you can say that to them and ask them to make a choice and stick with it.

But trying to meet the literal interpretation of what they say shallowly while designing the system to twist that to avoid what they're actually asking for is just going to make things worse. That would definitely engender that 'The DM is out to get us/trick us' feeling.

As I recently said in another thread, I tend to take people at face value.

So when they say "We are scared are characters will die," I take steps to address character mortality, rather than guessing at some underlying problem with the amount of effort the PCs are being asked to put into the game, especially when they say "No," when directly asked if that is the problem.

Likewise, when I do say "This is the game I am running." The players agree, but then get really salty over something else in the game leaving me guessing about what the actual cause of their frustration is.

NichG
2021-06-22, 06:50 PM
As I recently said in another thread, I tend to take people at face value.

So when they say "We are scared are characters will die," I take steps to address character mortality, rather than guessing at some underlying problem with the amount of effort the PCs are being asked to put into the game, especially when they say "No," when directly asked if that is the problem.

Likewise, when I do say "This is the game I am running." The players agree, but then get really salty over something else in the game leaving me guessing about what the actual cause of their frustration is.

So that's a good reason to zoom things out and rather than looking at specific complaints, have a conversation about what you really want to get out of game and what they really want to get out of game. And listen rather than trying to persuade or argue or convince. Then you can ask the question 'can we game together and get something like what we want?'. And an answer of 'no' must be allowed, if that's what the conclusion is.

If you say 'I need games to challenge the players, and I can't enjoy games that don't - if we keep playing together, expect me to be trying to challenge you, and if you find ways around being challenged then I will unapologetically change things to restore the level of challenge I desire', and they agree, then if they later complain you can say 'well, you agreed earlier, this is one of those things I need in order to enjoy running games, so I'm not going to do anything at all about your complaint - if that ruins things for you, there's the door'.

But at the same time, you have to be receptive to what they ask for. If they say 'Fine, I am okay with being challenged and with playing a hero, but I absolutely need to feel respected.' then you cannot use villains who gloat or laugh, or authorities who demand subservience, or interventionalist gods who interact with and judge their believers, even if those elements seem to be necessary for verisimilitude or for the story you want to tell or any other reason you come up with - if you agree to provide that, you have to provide it and compromise other things, or say that you can't provide it and give them a chance to walk. If they say 'I want to show off and punch down against NPCs and see them whine' or whatever, you have to decide then and there 'is this something I'm willing to provide?' and if the answer is no, you have to say that honestly even if it means they walk out the door.

I think this is the kind of letter you need to write, not one trying to convince the players to take responsibility for outcomes or whatever. Otherwise its like you're trying to be a genie saying 'I did what you literally asked, why are you complaining when it isn't what you wanted?'.

Talakeal
2021-06-22, 07:16 PM
So that's a good reason to zoom things out and rather than looking at specific complaints, have a conversation about what you really want to get out of game and what they really want to get out of game. And listen rather than trying to persuade or argue or convince. Then you can ask the question 'can we game together and get something like what we want?'. And an answer of 'no' must be allowed, if that's what the conclusion is.

If you say 'I need games to challenge the players, and I can't enjoy games that don't - if we keep playing together, expect me to be trying to challenge you, and if you find ways around being challenged then I will unapologetically change things to restore the level of challenge I desire', and they agree, then if they later complain you can say 'well, you agreed earlier, this is one of those things I need in order to enjoy running games, so I'm not going to do anything at all about your complaint - if that ruins things for you, there's the door'.

But at the same time, you have to be receptive to what they ask for. If they say 'Fine, I am okay with being challenged and with playing a hero, but I absolutely need to feel respected.' then you cannot use villains who gloat or laugh, or authorities who demand subservience, or interventionalist gods who interact with and judge their believers, even if those elements seem to be necessary for verisimilitude or for the story you want to tell or any other reason you come up with - if you agree to provide that, you have to provide it and compromise other things, or say that you can't provide it and give them a chance to walk. If they say 'I want to show off and punch down against NPCs and see them whine' or whatever, you have to decide then and there 'is this something I'm willing to provide?' and if the answer is no, you have to say that honestly even if it means they walk out the door.

I think this is the kind of letter you need to write, not one trying to convince the players to take responsibility for outcomes or whatever. Otherwise its like you're trying to be a genie saying 'I did what you literally asked, why are you complaining when it isn't what you wanted?'.

I was right with you until the very end.

The thing is, the one thing that I am absolutely not willing to entertain anymore, is players who look for someone to blame and then lash out at them when their character fails at something, especially if it is going to become a years long festering grudge.

Virtually everything else is negotiable except for this.

icefractal
2021-06-22, 07:33 PM
Maybe center the letter specifically on that then. Possibly something like:

"I'm not trying to kill PCs or make them fail, and it's rare for that to happen (stats on success/survival rate go here, if desired), but I don't fudge the dice and so it is possible. If it does happen, shouting at me or other players is not at all helpful and creates a hostile environment. Please try to keep your **** together like a functioning adult (this is overly sarcastic, probably should rephrase), and if things get too heated we'll put the game on pause so everyone can cool down. If you want to discuss rule or setting changes we can do that between games; changes won't be made on the spur of the moment."

That last part is a little strict, and if your group was more functional I'd leave it out. But with this group, you're never going to get them to stop yelling at you if that's a successful strategy for winning, so make it not be one.

NichG
2021-06-22, 08:12 PM
I was right with you until the very end.

The thing is, the one thing that I am absolutely not willing to entertain anymore, is players who look for someone to blame and then lash out at them when their character fails at something, especially if it is going to become a years long festering grudge.

Virtually everything else is negotiable except for this.

First, don't say 'everything else is negotiable' unless you actually mean it seriously. From this and other threads, running a game with zero challenge is not a point you're willing to budge on. Running a game where you have NPCs that are cardboard cutouts or who debase themselves so that the players feel good about punching down on them is not a point you're willing to budge on. If you're going to go to your players and say 'I will run anything you want, as long as you don't lash out at me when your character fails' and they come back with 'run a game where failure is impossible', you don't get to respond 'but I don't wanna'.

Similarly, you don't get to tell players that they should take responsibility. You can require it as a condition of running for them, but if you're unwilling to actually show them the door when they then lash out and blame you or if they say 'no, I consider you responsible and I'm not budging on that', then there's no reason for them to believe that you actually mean anything you say.

Talakeal
2021-06-22, 09:07 PM
First, don't say 'everything else is negotiable' unless you actually mean it seriously. From this and other threads, running a game with zero challenge is not a point you're willing to budge on. Running a game where you have NPCs that are cardboard cutouts or who debase themselves so that the players feel good about punching down on them is not a point you're willing to budge on. If you're going to go to your players and say 'I will run anything you want, as long as you don't lash out at me when your character fails' and they come back with 'run a game where failure is impossible', you don't get to respond 'but I don't wanna'.

Similarly, you don't get to tell players that they should take responsibility. You can require it as a condition of running for them, but if you're unwilling to actually show them the door when they then lash out and blame you or if they say 'no, I consider you responsible and I'm not budging on that', then there's no reason for them to believe that you actually mean anything you say.

Now who's taking people overly literally? :smallbiggrin:

What I meant was that I will negotiate with the level of difficulty, not just turn it off. But you know what? To heck with it, if the players ever actually come forward and said they didn't want any difficulty (not that I think they really feel that way or would admit it if they did) I could be persuaded to run such a game, but it would require a lot of other concessions and would be a very different sort of game (I personally prefer to play in more social relationship driven games, but have never gotten to run one because players always want action adventure with tons of combat, I might like to shake that up).

But I will not be an abuse sponge any longer, especially for things that happened decades ago, and I am not going to sit around and watch people acting like toddlers and thinking that they can get their way by screaming and throwing things and calling people names. And this time I really do mean it, as I mentioned in the last thread, a few months ago I really did call the cops on a player who refused to leave my house after I told him he was no longer welcome after he refused to stop screaming and swearing and calling other people cheaters over losing a board game.

Now, how to actually manage it without the entire group imploding is a bit trickier.

Out of curiosity, why do I not get to tell people they should take responsibility for their own actions again? It is both a true statement, and one that doesn't require any behavior on their part.

NichG
2021-06-22, 10:17 PM
Now who's taking people overly literally? :smallbiggrin:

What I meant was that I will negotiate with the level of difficulty, not just turn it off. But you know what? To heck with it, if the players ever actually come forward and said they didn't want any difficulty (not that I think they really feel that way or would admit it if they did) I could be persuaded to run such a game, but it would require a lot of other concessions and would be a very different sort of game (I personally prefer to play in more social relationship driven games, but have never gotten to run one because players always want action adventure with tons of combat, I might like to shake that up).


If both you and your players are terrible at communication, do you think waiting for them to figure out how to say the words in the way you need to hear them is really going to help things move forward? The fact that you recognize that it'd be a barrier for them to admit it even if they felt it should be a prompt for you to help them figure out if it is what they really want. It's like in your case, I think there are things you find easier to admit to needing from your group in order to be happy running a game, and there are things which are like pulling teeth because perhaps it doesn't sound as good or defensible to you to say e.g. 'I need to be challenging the players or I'm bored'.

To me, a player or a GM wants what they want, and its not any better or worse if they want the 'correct' things. I'd rather someone outright tell me about something they need from game even if it sounds bad, than hide it and have it fester. If a GM really wants to run a railroad game or even just wants to narrate their story for four hours each session or actively wants to increase their PC kill count, y'know, that can be fine if everyone agrees to it. Maybe it means I wouldn't play in that game, but I won't resent the person like I would if they were to hide that and just take what they want while say they weren't doing it.



But I will not be an abuse sponge any longer, especially for things that happened decades ago, and I am not going to sit around and watch people acting like toddlers and thinking that they can get their way by screaming and throwing things and calling people names. And this time I really do mean it, as I mentioned in the last thread, a few months ago I really did call the cops on a player who refused to leave my house after I told him he was no longer welcome after he refused to stop screaming and swearing and calling other people cheaters over losing a board game.

Now, how to actually manage it without the entire group imploding is a bit trickier.


You have to be willing to accept the possibility of implosion otherwise you're basically saying 'I will be an abuse sponge if it would prevent the group from imploding'



Out of curiosity, why do I not get to tell people they should take responsibility for their own actions again? It is both a true statement, and one that doesn't require any behavior on their part.

You're trying to determine how they perceive things, and their perceptions are their own. You can only decide how you act, not how other people act or how other people think. You can say 'if you don't take responsibility, I won't play with you' because that's something you do have power over.

Lacco
2021-06-23, 02:51 AM
Now, how to actually manage it without the entire group imploding is a bit trickier.

NichG actually stated this, but to reiterate:

One thing that is known about negotiations: there is no negotiation unless you are willing to stand up from the table and leave.

If you are not willing to say "nope, bye", it's not negotiation: it's how far you are willing to get pushed. Especially if the other side knows this. And as you have stated:

"the one thing that I am absolutely not willing to entertain anymore, is players who look for someone to blame and then lash out at them when their character fails at something, especially if it is going to become a years long festering grudge.

Virtually everything else is negotiable except for this."

So, that's... pretty far.

patchyman
2021-06-23, 07:47 AM
I want to focus on an important aspect of this: when you set the party up with puzzles monsters, it's not *the system*, it's not *themselves*, it's *you* that they will blame when they cannot get the puzzle.

And now, Talakeal, they've got years or decades of Pavlovian training to blame you.

I would add that in the most recent campaign, the players have 3 bases on which to blame you:
- As system designer, for any potential issues in the system;
- As adventure creator, since you aren’t running modules, you selected the challenges they face;
- As DM, for on the fly decisions you may make.

Edit: that doesn’t mean they are *right* to blames you, just that you represent a relatively larger target. People say a DM is god even when he only wears the DM hat, how much more when he wears the sustem designer and the adventure designer hat?

Quertus
2021-06-23, 09:25 AM
I would add that in the most recent campaign, the players have 3 bases on which to blame you:
- As system designer, for any potential issues in the system;
- As adventure creator, since you aren’t running modules, you selected the challenges they face;
- As DM, for on the fly decisions you may make.

Edit: that doesn’t mean they are *right* to blames you, just that you represent a relatively larger target. People say a DM is god even when he only wears the DM hat, how much more when he wears the sustem designer and the adventure designer hat?

Yup. What's the "right" answer has little to do with human behavior, especially where *blame* is concerned.

It is simply very predictable that a culture of blame would find many reasons to blame the system designer / module writer / GM.


I actually did try that once.

The problem was that it created a "wealth spiral" where the players kept getting further and further ahead of the curve, making each mission easier than the last until it became impossible for me to adhere to any objective standards of balance or to present any situation that was dangerous or threatening without it being completely overwhelming.

If I could actually figure out conclusively that this was what my players problem with the game was, I could probably re-balance the system around it though.

That's part of the purpose of testing.


So this is again I think your blind spot.

What if having that wealth spiral where each mission becomes easier than the last is what your players actually want? What if trying to adhere to 'any objective standards of balance' or 'presenting any situation that was dangerous or threatening' is actually their problem with the game. Then whenever you change the rules to return to what you see as balance, the players are going to see that as you taking away the toys that they went through all of the stuff they didn't like in order to earn.


Maybe so.

But its really hard for me to take a game seriously where it is literally impossible to fail or for me to take a setting seriously where nobody can be competent except for the PCs.

Also, I think I only have one player who really enjoys that style of play, afaict the rest might be as bored by that game as I was.

Explicitly ask them. Don't run on guesswork.

Use examples for clarity: "usually, I run with 'objective standards of balance, presenting situations that are dangerous or threatening'. In X campaign, I did not - I did Y instead. This created a wealth spiral, which had effect of 'making each mission easier than the last until, IMO, it became impossible' to provide a reasonable challenge. What are your feelings about this difference between these two games?"

And create tests to *engineer* examples for the group to discuss and evaluate, to facilitate communication.

kyoryu
2021-06-23, 10:05 AM
What I meant was that I will negotiate with the level of difficulty, not just turn it off. But you know what? To heck with it, if the players ever actually come forward and said they didn't want any difficulty (not that I think they really feel that way or would admit it if they did) I could be persuaded to run such a game, but it would require a lot of other concessions and would be a very different sort of game (I personally prefer to play in more social relationship driven games, but have never gotten to run one because players always want action adventure with tons of combat, I might like to shake that up).

Honestly, get yourself out of the business of determining difficulty. Especially if you're theoretically giving players agency.

Present a world. Let them choose what to do. If they want to be level 20s beating up kobolds? So be it, but then they get crap rewards and probably no xp. If they want to go fight a dragon at level 1? So be it, but then they get roasted. (Of course, give them sufficient info that they can't claim you were tricking them).

If they know there's a kobold forest, and an orc cave, and an ogre mountain (in increasing order of difficulty, ish), let them decide where they want to go, and what level of risk they are comfortable with. Make sure you deliver them more-or-less what is promised (there can be some encounters of higher difficulty, but they should be telegraphed or avoidable). And then let them make and live with their decisions.

Talakeal
2021-06-23, 10:20 AM
I would add that in the most recent campaign, the players have 3 bases on which to blame you:
- As system designer, for any potential issues in the system;
- As adventure creator, since you aren’t running modules, you selected the challenges they face;
- As DM, for on the fly decisions you may make.

Edit: that doesn’t mean they are *right* to blames you, just that you represent a relatively larger target. People say a DM is god even when he only wears the DM hat, how much more when he wears the sustem designer and the adventure designer hat?

For sure.

I have always thought that is one of the reasons I have such trouble finding new players, I have to sell myself to them as a DM and as a person as well as sell them on my system. Lots of people like one or two, very few all three.

Quertus
2021-06-23, 05:48 PM
For sure.

I have always thought that is one of the reasons I have such trouble finding new players, I have to sell myself to them as a DM and as a person as well as sell them on my system. Lots of people like one or two, very few all three.

Yes and no.

Yes, not everyone enjoys being a tester. And some very few people still are gung-ho about official content, even outside sanctioned play.

But you only really need to sell yourself as a GM. Someone who's done that? Sure, I'll help them play test their system.

In these forums, to me, you have sold yourself as a GM on the strength of your encounter design. Which is why I know that, if you lived close by, I'd want to try and join your games. (Granted, from some of these same posts, I fear that I may find the environment too toxic for my tastes, but I don't *know* that, so, while I might not want to sign a 5-year contract, your encounter design definitely makes it worth my while to investigate the group.)

The easy way to sell yourself as a GM is to run games - one-shots at local hobby stores, "game day" events, short adventures, etc. Then you can broach the topic of, "so, I've got this homebrew system I'd like to test…" and/or "I've got a group…".

Satinavian
2021-06-24, 04:19 AM
For sure.

I have always thought that is one of the reasons I have such trouble finding new players, I have to sell myself to them as a DM and as a person as well as sell them on my system. Lots of people like one or two, very few all three.
Well, yes.

I would be quite hesitent to trust a GM i don't know who wants to run his special homebrew system i also don't know at a table i don't know as well.


Join groups without Brian and Bob. When you get to know fellow players that share your idea of a good game, tell them you would like to GM a campaign and have a system for it.

Or find players for a new group (without Brian and Bob) with a popular system, run one or two campaign with it for them and when it works well, tell them about your howmbrew system you would like to run.

You might also reconsider to do gaming via sky, dicord, roll20 and the like. You always complained ybout lack of players in your local area and after the pandemic, a significant portion of roleplayers have gotten comfortable with those tools. I know it is not your preferred way, but when you otherwise are stuck with Bob and Brian and whoever those bring along, your cahances for a regular good group are slim.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-24, 05:47 AM
The easy way to sell yourself as a GM is to run games - one-shots at local hobby stores, "game day" events, short adventures, etc. Then you can broach the topic of, "so, I've got this homebrew system I'd like to test…" and/or "I've got a group…".

Or you can just skip the middle step and run public playtest at a convention or club.

Quertus
2021-06-24, 08:05 AM
Or you can just skip the middle step and run public playtest at a convention or club.

Sure, but… several of my friends have had difficulty "selling themselves" on all those fronts simultaneously, convincing people to take that many leaps of faith simultaneously.

You know, kind of like what Talakeal was describing.

Talakeal
2021-06-24, 01:25 PM
So, as I mentioned, when I showed the player my letter again, he was unable to find what he interpreted as a boast about killing characters. He told me that he must have been reading the letter while still mad about what I told the group the previous day was something like "Its fine if you all want to play evil characters, but keep in mind that you need to work together to survive so it is in your own best interest not to betray your own party".


As for the letter itself, I am thinking it would work better if presented as an in character tip sheet to help players learn the game. A lot of people seem to be reading it as overbearing and controlling rather than as helpful, and that might work to change the tone?



Still need to figure out a way to convey that there is uncertainty involved in any dice game and that a weakness you chose coming up in play does not mean I am picking on you, and that people need to be more mature in general.





Honestly, get yourself out of the business of determining difficulty. Especially if you're theoretically giving players agency.

Present a world. Let them choose what to do. If they want to be level 20s beating up kobolds? So be it, but then they get crap rewards and probably no xp. If they want to go fight a dragon at level 1? So be it, but then they get roasted. (Of course, give them sufficient info that they can't claim you were tricking them).

If they know there's a kobold forest, and an orc cave, and an ogre mountain (in increasing order of difficulty, ish), let them decide where they want to go, and what level of risk they are comfortable with. Make sure you deliver them more-or-less what is promised (there can be some encounters of higher difficulty, but they should be telegraphed or avoidable). And then let them make and live with their decisions.

My players have explicitly told me they do not want this.

And, as I mentioned in the other thread, nobody really likes sandbox style play as it requires a ton of work upfront on everyone's part and the lack of a pacing mechanic screws with game balance in all sorts of ways.


You might also reconsider to do gaming via sky, discord, roll20 and the like. You always complained about lack of players in your local area and after the pandemic, a significant portion of role-players have gotten comfortable with those tools. I know it is not your preferred way, but when you otherwise are stuck with Bob and Brian and whoever those bring along, your chances for a regular good group are slim.


I am in an online game right now. Playing online is still terrible.

Also, its not just about home-brew systems, its honestly really hard to find players for anything that isn't D&D or Pathfinder, even really popular systems like World of Darkness.

Heck, in my current group the DM wanted to try doing a Call of Cthulhu one shot and half the players walked over it.


Or you can just skip the middle step and run public playtest at a convention or club.

I have ran several one shots at conventions, but it doesn't really serve much of a purpose.

The game is still to far away from publication to generate hype, but too far along in development for a casual four hour playtest to reveal many issues, and one-shots don't really scratch my itch for running a game for fun.

NichG
2021-06-24, 02:51 PM
So, as I mentioned, when I showed the player my letter again, he was unable to find what he interpreted as a boast about killing characters. He told me that he must have been reading the letter while still mad about what I told the group the previous day was something like "Its fine if you all want to play evil characters, but keep in mind that you need to work together to survive so it is in your own best interest not to betray your own party".

As for the letter itself, I am thinking it would work better if presented as an in character tip sheet to help players learn the game. A lot of people seem to be reading it as overbearing and controlling rather than as helpful, and that might work to change the tone?


Still need to figure out a way to convey that there is uncertainty involved in any dice game and that a weakness you chose coming up in play does not mean I am picking on you, and that people need to be more mature in general.


Is there a particular reason you're wedded to the original text of the letter such that rather than change the text you'd rather just wrap it differently? You made a thread to get the forum to workshop this with you and you've received a lot of feedback on how to change it. In particular, the advice that the short paragraph of intro you gave motivating the letter makes for a much better letter than the exhaustive list reminding players of all the ways that they might fail or suffer or screw up.

Talakeal
2021-06-24, 03:06 PM
Is there a particular reason you're wedded to the original text of the letter such that rather than change the text you'd rather just wrap it differently? You made a thread to get the forum to workshop this with you and you've received a lot of feedback on how to change it. In particular, the advice that the short paragraph of intro you gave motivating the letter makes for a much better letter than the exhaustive list reminding players of all the ways that they might fail or suffer or screw up.

Not wedded to the text at all, in fact I have given up on the letter entirely and am looking for better ways to convey the information.

This is still one of those cases where I feel like I am living in the regular world and you guys are in Bizarro world though, that the idea of presenting hints and advice comes across as reminding people of all the ways they might fail.

NichG
2021-06-24, 06:04 PM
Not wedded to the text at all, in fact I have given up on the letter entirely and am looking for better ways to convey the information.

This is still one of those cases where I feel like I am living in the regular world and you guys are in Bizarro world though, that the idea of presenting hints and advice comes across as reminding people of all the ways they might fail.

You used terms like 'ruthless', said you expected all resources to be used up, 'if you blame me we'll be on edge and it will make it worse next time', etc, so it's more than just hints and advice. Similarly there's a lot of 'if you screw up it's your fault' woven in.

E.g. you said 'if you pick a weakness, expect for it to matter' which is 'I'm gonna get ya!' rather than something more neutral like 'the campaign I intend to run contains enemies who think tactically including selective targeting and focus fire, poison-users, things which have mental attacks and domination effects, grapplers, etc. So you might want to be aware and plan for it.'

The Glyphstone
2021-06-24, 06:51 PM
That does sound good. Maybe with an addendum along the lines of outright stating, "Well rounded defenses are better than one trick ponies or glass cannons. While I won't deliberately single your weaknesses out, I will used varied enemies with different types of attacks, and eventually someone will throw rock to your scissors." Its not vindictive GMing, just the inevitability of averages.

NichG
2021-06-24, 07:11 PM
That does sound good. Maybe with an addendum along the lines of outright stating, "Well rounded defenses are better than one trick ponies or glass cannons. While I won't deliberately single your weaknesses out, I will used varied enemies with different types of attacks, and eventually someone will throw rock to your scissors." Its not vindictive GMing, just the inevitability of averages.

I tried to avoid active or overly predictive speech there, or expressing preference about a player's choice of style of play or build, because that could come across as condescending with this group. Also its dangerous if indeed the correct kind of glass cannon or one trick pony actually ends up being a more optimal choice (or even just if a particular player/style pulls it off), then it sounds like trying to dissuade players from running characters the GM doesn't want to deal with rather than actually being honest and direct information about the campaign contents being provided.

Quertus
2021-06-24, 07:23 PM
Not wedded to the text at all, in fact I have given up on the letter entirely and am looking for better ways to convey the information.

This is still one of those cases where I feel like I am living in the regular world and you guys are in Bizarro world though, that the idea of presenting hints and advice comes across as reminding people of all the ways they might fail.

Really?



Your character is yours to build, but understand that in doing so you are making decisions which have consequences.


Overly specializing means you excel in one area, but may be useless and bored when that area isn’t relevant.


Likewise, a character who foregoes defense for offense may find themselves incapacitated too often to make use of their strengths, while one who foregoes offense for more defense might simply be ignored in favor of softer targets and contributing little.


If you have a low strength, expect to be tripped or grappled; if you have no ranged weapon, expect to be kited; if you have no armor, expect to take a lot of damage, if you have low fortitude expect poison to be a problem, and if you have low resolve expect to fall prey to mind control or magic when it shows up.

That looks like… around a dozen ways to fail. And no positive hints.

But that's nowhere *near* the biggest problem with the letter.

Others have given you numerous very reasonable breakdowns of your letter. You really haven't indicated that you've taken them to heart.

Back in 2019, it was your post that preceded me making my spoof of the origin of CaW vs CaS. So you probably have a good notion of what frequencies I communicate on.

I've avoided doing so thus far, but… would you *like* me to dissect your letter? Spoof it? Make suggestions about what you seem to be after, and how to get it?

I don't think that any of these responses is… likely to add to your happiness. But that letter was *really bad*. To the point where I think most people are being *kind* in their depictions of it.

So, if there's a technique that I'm capable of, to help explain to you why i think that it's so bad, that you're willing to listen to, let me know. Otherwise, I'll continue ignoring the letter as much as possible. But



Not wedded to the text at all, in fact I have given up on the letter entirely and am looking for better ways to convey the information.

This is still one of those cases where I feel like I am living in the regular world and you guys are in Bizarro world though, that the idea of presenting hints and advice comes across as reminding people of all the ways they might fail.

I'm not sure if you're ready to hear what would be *good* to communicate until you understand what was *bad* about your previous attempt.

Or maybe that's just the limits of *my* skill at communication. But I know that *I* cannot explain to you what would be good without impressing upon you why it was good and properly explaining just how bad other ideas are any more than I could ever succeed to explain that the origin of CaW vs CaS was biased without going full spoof on its proponents.

So, your call. Would you *like* me to roast your letter? Or should I stick to advice for testing, like my "5-point plan"?

How can I best help you here?

Talakeal
2021-06-24, 10:35 PM
Really?

I think I failed to get across what I was saying to NichG as strongly as I meant.

I have completely deleted the original letter and have started writing something from the ground up that is going to be phrased as in character tips rather than an OOC lecture.


That looks like… around a dozen ways to fail. And no positive hints.

Again, that part is not about failure or success, but rather how one looks at the game.

There are plenty of positive words in there like "excel" and "strengths".

The idea I am trying to get across is that decisions you make will not be good or bad in the long run, but merely ways to express your character. Some choices might be situationally better or worse, but they will even out in the end.

For example; high fortitude guy is great this week fighting the poisonous spiders, and high will save is great next week when fighting the illithids. But in the end, they both excelled in one session and failed in the other, and both made the choice of "high fort" vs "high will" matter and illustrated the character that you chose to play.


But that's nowhere *near* the biggest problem with the letter.

Others have given you numerous very reasonable breakdowns of your letter. You really haven't indicated that you've taken them to heart.

I've avoided doing so thus far, but… would you *like* me to dissect your letter? Spoof it? Make suggestions about what you seem to be after, and how to get it?

I don't think that any of these responses is… likely to add to your happiness. But that letter was *really bad*. To the point where I think most people are being *kind* in their depictions of it.

So, if there's a technique that I'm capable of, to help explain to you why i think that it's so bad, that you're willing to listen to, let me know. Otherwise, I'll continue ignoring the letter as much as possible. But




I'm not sure if you're ready to hear what would be *good* to communicate until you understand what was *bad* about your previous attempt.

Or maybe that's just the limits of *my* skill at communication. But I know that *I* cannot explain to you what would be good without impressing upon you why it was good and properly explaining just how bad other ideas are any more than I could ever succeed to explain that the origin of CaW vs CaS was biased without going full spoof on its proponents.

So, your call. Would you *like* me to roast your letter? Or should I stick to advice for testing, like my "5-point plan"?

How can I best help you here?

If you like, but I am really not seeing these reasonable breakdowns.

I am seeing plenty of ways that people going into it with a bias could interpret certain phrases out of context, but nothing really reasonable.

For example, a lot of people saying I will make encounters to target characters, even though I explicitly say I will use a wide variety of encounters, some of which will end up playing into your strengths and others your weaknesses. Likewise, people say that I am going to meta-game, even though I explicitly say that enemies will only use the abilities that are at their disposal or when they show up (although I guess one could stretch "smart" to mean metagaming if they were being really uncharitable).

But, as I already said, I am not going to use the initial letter anymore, so going over the specific wording to point out fault would just be an argument over linguistic deconstruction.




That does sound good. Maybe with an addendum along the lines of outright stating, "Well rounded defenses are better than one trick ponies or glass cannons. While I won't deliberately single your weaknesses out, I will used varied enemies with different types of attacks, and eventually someone will throw rock to your scissors." Its not vindictive GMing, just the inevitability of averages.

Yes, that is a very close reading to what I was trying to say.

But, its actually a bit harsher; because well rounded defenses are not "better" than one trick ponies or glass cannons, they are just different.

The main thrust is that there are no right or wrong choices, just various good and bad aspects which will all come up sometimes and be irrelevant other times and even out in the end; thus allowing you to play the character you chose by having the characteristics you selected actually matter and determine what they succeed at and what they fail at.


You used terms like 'ruthless', said you expected all resources to be used up, 'if you blame me we'll be on edge and it will make it worse next time', etc, so it's more than just hints and advice. Similarly there's a lot of 'if you screw up it's your fault' woven in.

E.g. you said 'if you pick a weakness, expect for it to matter' which is 'I'm gonna get ya!'

I agree ruthless was probably a bad word.

As for the rest, I didn't say that. I said things like, but all lot of that is objectively not what I said, and the rest is clearly not what I meant when taken as part of the letter as a whole.

NichG
2021-06-24, 10:50 PM
I agree ruthless was probably a bad word.

As for the rest, I didn't say that. I said things like, but all lot of that is objectively not what I said, and the rest is clearly not what I meant when taken as part of the letter as a whole.

You literally wrote:



I know it’s frustrating to lose, and if something bad happens to your character I know most people’s first instinct is to find something or someone to blame and then lash out at it, but understand that when you do that you are going to put everyone else on edge, which will make the next instance that much more severe.


'Which will make the next instance that much more severe' directly says there will be consequences if a player lashes out, and suggests that those will be in-game consequences of the form of more bad stuff happening to the character.

The 'if you pick a weakness, expect it to matter' -> 'I'm gonna get ya!' was all of this stuff:



Likewise, I tend to play enemies smart, and they will tend to use whatever methods are at their disposal to target your weaknesses. If you have a low strength, expect to be tripped or grappled; if you have no ranged weapon, expect to be kited; if you have no armor, expect to take a lot of damage, if you have low fortitude expect poison to be a problem, and if you have low resolve expect to fall prey to mind control or magic when it shows up.

Talakeal
2021-06-24, 11:02 PM
'Which will make the next instance that much more severe' directly says there will be consequences if a player lashes out, and suggests that those will be in-game consequences of the form of more bad stuff happening to the character.

Oh wow. Yeah, I hadn't even considered someone reading it that way. Dear god that sounds bad.*

What I meant was that if anyone (including myself) gets mad at anyone else (including myself) that puts the entire table on edge, which means that the next time someone (including myself) gets frustrated, they are going to be more likely to lash out them-self.

Do note though, in your paraphrase you explicitly use the words "if YOU blame ME [emphasis mine]," which I did not. I tried to make it very clear that this applies to the entire table, and it is no more acceptable to lash out at your fellow players than it is to lash out at the GM, and vice versa. Although, looking at it again, I suppose I could have said "when something bad happens to someone's character" rather than "your character" to make it even more neutral.


*: So I checked with my player and asked if that was how he read it, and his response was "No, I took it to mean the atmosphere at the table will get tenser and tenser until everyone is mad, but I can see how NichG thought that even if it is a bit of a stretch." But yeah, if that is how the forum hive mind read it, I can see how they would feel about the tone. Honestly, if that's the case I think you guys are being polite to a fault by not just flat out trying to verbally slap some sense into me; I would never game with someone so vindictive that they felt the best way to resolve an issue is to double down on it as punishment.

The Glyphstone
2021-06-25, 09:09 AM
Yes, that is a very close reading to what I was trying to say.

But, its actually a bit harsher; because well rounded defenses are not "better" than one trick ponies or glass cannons, they are just different.

The main thrust is that there are no right or wrong choices, just various good and bad aspects which will all come up sometimes and be irrelevant other times and even out in the end; thus allowing you to play the character you chose by having the characteristics you selected actually matter and determine what they succeed at and what they fail

Leave off the first sentence entirely then. Keep the bit about eventually rolling scissors, then soften it with a reminder line along the lines of 'but you will throw scissors to their paper just as often, so everyone's character will get to shine at some point in what they choose to be good at". Or similar, but call out that high fort vs high will sort of idea , a carrot to soften the stick by specifically drawing attention to the times when they will be awesome. Its human nature to remember bad experiences more strongly, so look to pre empt that instinct by highlighting the good ones.

KorvinStarmast
2021-06-25, 11:24 AM
Not wedded to the text at all, in fact I have given up on the letter entirely and am looking for better ways to convey the information.
Suggested step 1.
Go back to my reply on the key points you want to raise; less is more. :smallsmile:
From a public speaking/presentation perspective, you have 3 to 5 points you want to make. Pick the most important 3, 4 or 5 and then Stop there.
Points appear to be:


1. Players are responsible for their own characters
2. Choices have consequences
3. Accept that the dice are fickle
4. Losing one's cool over bad luck or a bad roll is unfun for the rest of the group.
5. The importance of teamwork and making the most of the synergy of working together.

Talakeal
2021-06-26, 03:05 PM
This may be worthy of a new thread, but I have a follow up question:

Some of the responses to my letter seemed to indicate that I was overstepping my bounds by asking that all players create characters who are motivated to stick with their party and complete the adventure. Is this really too much to ask?

In my last campaign, it was like pulling teeth just to get the PCs to spend each session doing the following:

1: Go to the dungeon.
2: Kill monsters.
3: Talk to NPCs and try and recruit allies.
4: Use skills to overcome obstacles.
5: Collect treasure.
6: Return to town once the dungeon is explored or you are out of resources.

I promised the PCs that if they did the following nothing bad would ever happen to their characters. But even such a simple gameplay loop caused no end of trouble.


For an even more extreme example, back when we first started gaming everyone would make their characters in isolation, and then we would, as a group, agonize for hours about a possible way that all of these disparate characters could be motivated to join the party, let alone go on the adventure the DM wanted to run, and even though everyone wanted to game, most of the time it will fall apart after the first session due to lack of compatible motivations amongst the characters.



On a related note, I was talking about how people who calibrate their type and level of specialization with the size of the group will keep everyone from getting bored, and people were acting like this was a conscious decision on my part to punish players for the wrong character rather than a natural outcome of the game.

To illustrate in super simplified way:

If you have a party where:
One guy has a high charisma and agility, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has a high dexterity and endurance, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has a high intelligence and perception, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has an extreme strength and low scores in the other seven attributes.
And one guy has an above average score in all eight attributes.

Does it make sense that the latter two people will, on average over time, only have the spotlight half as often as the first three?

Batcathat
2021-06-26, 03:22 PM
Some of the responses to my letter seemed to indicate that I was overstepping my bounds by asking that all players create characters who are motivated to stick with their party and complete the adventure. Is this really too much to ask?

I would say it's a fairly reasonable request (not to mention kind of a necessity for the game to work at all) but the GM should also be flexible. For example, if I'm playing a heroic knight I'm expecting the GM to supply a different kind of plot hook than if I'm playing an amoral rogue.

Quertus
2021-06-26, 04:38 PM
Some of the responses to my letter seemed to indicate that I was overstepping my bounds by asking that all players create characters who are motivated to stick with their party and complete the adventure. Is this really too much to ask?

Talakeal, *most* of your letter was completely out of line (or, with the way it was worded, it could be read that way). But this one request, I've got your back on. This response

I would say it's a fairly reasonable request (not to mention kind of a necessity for the game to work at all) but the GM should also be flexible. For example, if I'm playing a heroic knight I'm expecting the GM to supply a different kind of plot hook than if I'm playing an amoral rogue.
pretty well has it covered.

For "normal", cooperative play, you all but *have* to make such a request. However, that doesn't justify the GM asking the noble Paladin to assassinate the good and just ruler of the land. Nor does it give players the right to play their characters as ****s, under the "protection" of "but you have to work with me".

If your group looks at this request of "build characters who can work together", and responds with anything but, "well, duh", then they probably need some remedial cooperation training. Unless, that is, they respond with, "how" or "what's the adventure premise", which just indicates that they're smarter / less overconfident than most.

As for earlier things… I'm glad you understand how bad what you wrote *could* be. You have quite a (seemingly unintentional) talent for unclear communication. That's *great* for some things (like, say, prophecies in a game where I'm a player), but *terrible* for your group.

This is no small part of why I suggested my "5-point plan", which focuses on communication and clear feedback. Senility willing, I'll copy it into this thread when I get a chance, since it probably belongs here.

But a recent thread had made me wonder whether focusing on "stress" wouldn't be a good path forward. Senility willing, I'll post more on that, as well.

Talakeal
2021-06-26, 04:50 PM
As for earlier things… I'm glad you understand how bad what you wrote *could* be. You have quite a (seemingly unintentional) talent for unclear communication. That's *great* for some things (like, say, prophecies in a game where I'm a player), but *terrible* for your group.

Here's the thing though, bad communication is far from a universal, and in my experience has a lot more with the context and attitude the reader brings to it than actual trouble communicating on anyone's fault.

Like, we used to have a game in the schoolyard where one person would pretend to be a genie and other people would make wishes, and the genie would try and twist them, and nobody ever found an un-twistable wish. Likewise, my Dad tells me that in the first day of Law School the professor would ask them to write a simple law which couldn't be misinterpreted to prove just how impossible it is.

In my experience it is virtually impossible to say something that can't be misinterpreted, and often times people's preconceived notions are more important than what is said. For example, I have shown the letter to five people irl, one of them thought it was about killing PCs, three of them read it as intended, one of them couldn't make it out at all, and none of them have read NichG's particularly horrifying interpretation about threatening punishment.

Likewise, the story about the avatar of violence doesn't involve poor communication per se, it was about two players going into the situation assuming I was trying to trick them rather than taking my statement at face value, and then blaming me for meta-tricking them by not trying to trick them.

Edit:


Talakeal, *most* of your letter was completely out of line (or, with the way it was worded, it could be read that way). But this one request, I've got your back on. This response
pretty well has it covered.

Ok, wait. Can you explain this claim to me with some specifics?

I mean, sure, any wording can be twisted; but how is asking guests to be mature and not throw tantrums when things don't do their way and explaining basic facts about the difficulty curve of my game to set realistic expectations completely out of line?

Also, people are making it out like its super long, but the main body is only eight bullet points, each explained in 1-3 sentences, and easily fits on half a printed page.

SanguisAevum
2021-06-26, 05:22 PM
Seven pages of feedback and advice that you don’t really seem to have taken on board. I’ll make it easy for you.

Speaking as a DM with 30 years of experience.

Ready?

You have one job as a DM. Create a setting and a story that is fun and engaging for your players.

Forget all this nonsense about warning players, setting boundaries, threatening (yes, it comes across as threatening) NPC competence, etc etc.

I read how you view your role as DM and all I can think is… jeez… it would be hell to play in a game run like this.

Stop taking yourself so seriously, and run a fun game that both you and your players can enjoy.

Talakeal
2021-06-26, 05:39 PM
Seven pages of feedback and advice that you don’t really seem to have taken on board. I’ll make it easy for you.

Speaking as a DM with 30 years of experience.

Ready?

You have one job as a DM. Create a setting and a story that is fun and engaging for your players.

Forget all this nonsense about warning players, setting boundaries, threatening (yes, it comes across as threatening) NPC competence, etc etc.

I read how you view your role as DM and all I can think is… jeez… it would be hell to play in a game run like this.

Stop taking yourself so seriously, and run a fun game that both you and your players can enjoy.

I am gonna need a little bit more detail here. You don't actually seem to be conveying anything here except for vague disapproval.

Could you please explain what part is hell and what you would do differently? What is your definition of a "fun game"? What are you saying my "role as the DM" is?

Like, pretend I am a new DM, just setting out, and I run a published module as written straight out of the book, and the players start screaming, swearing, and throwing models at me or one another the first time they fail a dice roll. How should I respond?

Literally nothing in here is about setting or story.

Are you saying that talking to players about their issues is the problem? Is it that I don't fudge everything so the players can't fail to make it more fun? Is it that I don't intentionally play NPCs extra stupid so the PCs feel like the only competent people in the world? What is it man?

Talakeal
2021-06-26, 05:59 PM
Ok, so here's the thing, as most of you know, I have been in a lot of bad games over the years.

Recently, four things happened that have made me decide things have to change.

1: Upon getting hit with a critical, a player threw a model at me. I lost my temper and threw one of my own models back at him, missed, and it hit a wall and broke.

2: Upon recruiting a new player into the group, one of the old players told him not to play with me because I would kill his character and then get mad at him for being dead, despite the fact that not only has she never lost a character in a game I run, but there have been zero PC fatalities for about five years before her ever even joining the group.

3: A player who always plays mages with minimum strength told me that grappling should only be allowed for PCs and that he considers any DM who uses grapple rules to be a cheater.

4: I was playing a board game with one of my players where I explained him the rules wrong (it was a game I haven't played in 5+ years and he didn't want to read the rulebook himself) and, when he found out, called me a cheater and then started getting super obnoxious and competitive so that everyone else quit, at which point he started yelling and, not wanting to lose my temper, I told him to stop, and he told me that he would not stop until we all acknowledged that he was the superior gamer and that we were intentionally trying to cheat him because we were afraid of his skills and new that was the only way we could win. At that point I told him to leave my house, and he started bellowing about how I had invited him over and could not rescind the hospitality he was due, and which point I told him that if he didn't either leave or calm down I would call the cops, he continued, and so I made good on my threat and had him removed from my house by the police and cut all ties with him.


These four things really showed me that there is something toxic in the core of my gaming group that goes beyond "poor communication" or even "being a bad GM"*. I think most of it boils down to, something between immaturity and paranoia, where everyone constantly thinks everyone else is out to get them and blames every failure on someone else, and is getting increasingly hostile and aggressive about it. And I legitimately don't know what to do.

This letter was an attempt to neutrally explain the situation without laying blame, but is being read as threatening, which is the exact opposite of the impression I am trying to get across.




*Also note that even though I am usually the GM, we do rotate on occasion, and it doesn't matter who is DMing or what game we are playing, similar conflicts still arise.

NichG
2021-06-26, 06:51 PM
The correct decision is 'don't invite those players back'. We're way in the weeds of the decision tree because you've systematically rejected most of the good choices and we're into 'well, what if we want to make 5 bad choices, how do we salvage it from there?' It's DM-ing on hard mode. The minimum bar of communication skill to pull it off is not 'not overtly bad', its 'I want to get this scientific paper past referee #2, who happens to be a direct competitor working on the same stuff who is more senior to me, and whom I've just scooped by rushing to publish even if it means I haven't had a chance to dot all my i's and cross all my t's and so there's lots of stuff that can be attacked and I wouldn't have an answer to'

icefractal
2021-06-26, 06:58 PM
*Also note that even though I am usually the GM, we do rotate on occasion, and it doesn't matter who is DMing or what game we are playing, similar conflicts still arise.Interesting, I didn't know that. I guess on the plus side it means they don't have it out for you in particular, but on the minus side they sound seriously toxic.

Thing is - I don't know what advice to give you about handling it, because my personal approach would be "Pause the game as soon as someone starts throwing a tantrum, boot them temporarily if they won't stop. If they reach the point of throwing things at me then permanently uninvite them." As would most people's here, I think. So if you're trying to keep playing with toxic people and detoxify them via a letter, you're entering fairly uncharted territory.

False God
2021-06-26, 07:09 PM
This may be worthy of a new thread, but I have a follow up question:

Some of the responses to my letter seemed to indicate that I was overstepping my bounds by asking that all players create characters who are motivated to stick with their party and complete the adventure. Is this really too much to ask?

In my last campaign, it was like pulling teeth just to get the PCs to spend each session doing the following:

1: Go to the dungeon.
2: Kill monsters.
3: Talk to NPCs and try and recruit allies.
4: Use skills to overcome obstacles.
5: Collect treasure.
6: Return to town once the dungeon is explored or you are out of resources.

I promised the PCs that if they did the following nothing bad would ever happen to their characters. But even such a simple gameplay loop caused no end of trouble.

It continues to beg the question, "What do your players want to do?"
Which parts of that equation are they interested in? Which ones do they enjoy (not the same as interested in, seriously)?


For an even more extreme example, back when we first started gaming everyone would make their characters in isolation, and then we would, as a group, agonize for hours about a possible way that all of these disparate characters could be motivated to join the party, let alone go on the adventure the DM wanted to run, and even though everyone wanted to game, most of the time it will fall apart after the first session due to lack of compatible motivations amongst the characters.
I don't even allow my experienced, well-fitting players to make their characters in isolation. Maybe they don't have to write them down right now, but I expect the group to discuss what they're interested in playing and how that will interact before those characters ever hit the game.

Further, I no longer let my players decide if they are "interested" in joining the party. Either they are A: already known to each other and willing to work together, or B: placed into the party via means beyond their in-game control (my favorite is: they're all broke and at a fantasy job fair for adventurers and all get paired up by the coordinator).

I'm far less tolerant with my group than you and I like them and they like me.

Quertus
2021-06-26, 07:17 PM
The 5-point plan

Point 0 - the background

This is based on Talakeal a) saying that he wants to run a normal, linear adventure at full normal challenge; b) asking about my "testing" advice (which involves running short adventures with particular sets of changes, to see how the group responds / what feedback we get / where/if things still break).

It's also written in the first person, as an "I promise" letter.

Point 1 - two modes

Encounters in the game will have two modes: white box, and black box. In white box mode, when you first encounter or hear about a creature, I will hand you their stat block, and dealing with them is a simple war game; in black box, I will not - they are puzzle monsters that you must learn about in game, through research, experimentation, etc. The doppelganger pretending to be a Vampire and the Avatar of Hate are two examples of monsters that would receive black box treatment.

Point 2 - text boxes

To the extent possible, I will only communicate to you about black box items through text boxes. Text boxes are text that is pre-written before the campaign begins, and verified to be less ambiguous than previous "cannot be killed by violence" hints. Text boxes will be read by one of you, and, once unlocked, will be available online.

All black box encounters will be pre-verified to be not just understandable, but to suggest *multiple* solutions to [my non-gaming parents / random 5-year-olds / the sources of this advice / whatever].

Point 3 - sealed envelope module

Whether while box or black box, all encounters will, to the extent possible, be statted out before the party even exists. Thus, they will not be tailored to the party. The entire adventure will live in a sealed envelope, and you will be able to review both a) the contents of this envelope after the campaign, and b) the stats of any encounter after the encounter is over, to confirm that all encounters match what I presented and I'm not pulling anything.

Point 4 - active disconnect checking
Whenever you attempt to take an action that I do not understand *why* you would take, I will ask you to explain your reasoning. If your reasoning is based on something your character would know better than to attempt (wait until night to navigate by the stars when this world has no stars, for example), I will correct this misunderstanding.

I encourage you to run your plans by me early, so that I can correct such misunderstandings early. As I am new at this, I encourage you to do the same for one another, and ask, "why" if any of your fellow players takes an action you don't understand, or that seems to run contrary to your agreed-upon plans, at least until I get used to it.

Point 5 - etc

This space left blank for additions.

Like…

In the past, I have modified monster tactics, making them fight harder when they were losing, or going easier on the party when you were struggling. I will no longer do so.

Going forward, monsters will behave with consistent levels of strategy and effort, to give you the agency to have your plans, your successes and failures, actually have meaning.

Expected value


What do you hope to learn from this? If you could line up scenario design/reaction/lesson that's great but I'm pretty sure they will just fixate on the greatest obstacle and rally against it.

Hmmm… I guess that this question was directed at me?

If so, allow me to start by not answering your question, and answering a different set of questions instead.

How would I go about handling them rallying against the largest obstacles to their success? By removing all such obstacles. How would I do that? With my suggested "demigods of adventure" plan, to test just how close to death / failure / dishonor / second place the players actually feel comfortable walking when given the choice. (EDIT: And what their complaints look like under such circumstances)

Does my "5-point" suggested course of action solve this particular issue? Does it remove all obstacles? No. Talakeal has indicated that they want to run a "fair" game, with no unusual rules (read: "fully challenging"; see also the letter that "the sane player" interpreted with a "killer GM" response); removing all challenge would be counterproductive to their current goals. Although the players complain about difficulty often enough that *I* would prioritize testing changes to difficulty, I'll respect Talakeal's wishes to not do so this time around. So I've dropped that objective for the moment.

Does my 5-point plan "line up scenario design/reaction/lesson"? No, that's not the point.

OK, then, if that's not the point, what is? The point… well, that's complicated. So complicated, in fact, that I'll probably miss some details if I try to explain it. But here goes.

So, afaict, the biggest, longest running problem is that Talakeal games in Bizarro World. We can't give Talakeal advice (beyond "kick those players, find a new group"), because his players' actions are so nonsensical. Except… their reactions to anything where we have definitive, concrete proof of what, exactly, they're responding to? Their response to modules, and to Talakeal's "I'm a killer GM" letter are not Bizarro World - they're actually quite reasonable. So the first goal is to remove any ambiguity about what the players are responding to, even removing the tone of Talakeal's delivery by using handouts and others reading the text, to see how much Bizarro World still remains. Anywhere where there's still Bizarro World logic? That's somewhere where we need to investigate further. Anywhere where they consistently respond sanely? "Bizarro World" problem solved.

Another big problem is puzzles. There's a big disconnect between Talakeal's belief that "a big nose" is sufficient to make the sneeze Ogre "obvious in retrospect" and the player's stance of, "you just made that up"; a big disconnect between "cannot be killed by violence" translating to "cannot be killed" vs "must be killed by nonviolent means". When Talakeal presents his clues¹ to his evil overlord mandated 5-year-old advisor substitute², *they* see multiple valid solutions to the puzzle. So, the 5-point plan tests ways to remedy this as well, by providing all "boxed text" in a centralized location for review by the players. This gives us a chance to review the text before the players see it to fix the wording to reduce such ambiguity, allows the players to focus on the relevant details, and solves the (misguided, IMO) complaint of "the GM should take notes for us", all in one fell swoop.

The dichotomy of white box and puzzle monsters helps the players know when it is time to focus, helps draw their attention.

The drastic change in style clearly communicates that Talakeal is taking the issue seriously, and both buys [word] and invites feedback.

The "printed encounter stats by the end of every encounter" and "module in a sealed envelope" (created before the characters were even discussed) clearly show that Talakeal isn't making things up / targeting specific players.

I'm playing a whole orchestra of "testing for improvement" here, with each carefully chosen piece interwoven to be greater than the sum of their individual parts.

If you make many of the players' former complaints obviously false, what will they do? Will they continue to make obviously false claims? Will they complain about something else?

Perhaps we'll get lucky, and actually get to the root of the problem.

Or perhaps we'll get really lucky, and, with these new adjustments, the problems will simply go away.

But, regardless, we'll be getting feedback regarding their response to unambiguously known inputs, making our evaluation of their response much easier.

¹ and *only* those clues, not hours of gaming, or weeks of real life in-between hearing the clues and acting upon them, which biases things somewhat.
² namely, his non-gamer parents

Satinavian
2021-06-27, 01:56 AM
Some of the responses to my letter seemed to indicate that I was overstepping my bounds by asking that all players create characters who are motivated to stick with their party and complete the adventure. Is this really too much to ask?Outside of very special games that is something players should always strife for, yes.

But it is bad as a rule. Because in every case where players don't want to do those things, there are serious underlying problems at the table that have to be solved first. If you ever have a situation in which your players don't want to play your adventure, that is not solved by "But you have to, that is your role as player".


I promised the PCs that if they did the following nothing bad would ever happen to their characters. But even such a simple gameplay loop caused no end of trouble.
And you still can't understand why or tell us the reason.


For an even more extreme example, back when we first started gaming everyone would make their characters in isolation, and then we would, as a group, agonize for hours about a possible way that all of these disparate characters could be motivated to join the party, let alone go on the adventure the DM wanted to run, and even though everyone wanted to game, most of the time it will fall apart after the first session due to lack of compatible motivations amongst the characters.
That is a thing that can happen even in better groups. It is rare and usually result of miscommunication. And indeed, talking a bit about who plays what or what the campaign is about before every one makes their character usually solves it.




If you have a party where:
One guy has a high charisma and agility, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has a high dexterity and endurance, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has a high intelligence and perception, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has an extreme strength and low scores in the other seven attributes.
And one guy has an above average score in all eight attributes.

Does it make sense that the latter two people will, on average over time, only have the spotlight half as often as the first three?That depends on system, campaign and other things. It is not possible to extrapolate spotlight just from that.

But the ideal would be that the last two people get exactly as much spotlight as the rest. If your system allows to build one-trick-ponies and jack-of-all-trades, then both those concepts should be viable choices and not better or worse than the rest. Of course, it is hard to build a system this way and most fail, but that should very much be the intended goal.

If you want to build the system in a way that the first 4 are just better than the last two, you would be better served removing the last two options. No one needs intentional trap options.

Morgaln
2021-06-27, 05:49 AM
Ok, so here's the thing, as most of you know, I have been in a lot of bad games over the years.

Recently, four things happened that have made me decide things have to change.

1: Upon getting hit with a critical, a player threw a model at me. I lost my temper and threw one of my own models back at him, missed, and it hit a wall and broke.

2: Upon recruiting a new player into the group, one of the old players told him not to play with me because I would kill his character and then get mad at him for being dead, despite the fact that not only has she never lost a character in a game I run, but there have been zero PC fatalities for about five years before her ever even joining the group.

3: A player who always plays mages with minimum strength told me that grappling should only be allowed for PCs and that he considers any DM who uses grapple rules to be a cheater.

4: I was playing a board game with one of my players where I explained him the rules wrong (it was a game I haven't played in 5+ years and he didn't want to read the rulebook himself) and, when he found out, called me a cheater and then started getting super obnoxious and competitive so that everyone else quit, at which point he started yelling and, not wanting to lose my temper, I told him to stop, and he told me that he would not stop until we all acknowledged that he was the superior gamer and that we were intentionally trying to cheat him because we were afraid of his skills and new that was the only way we could win. At that point I told him to leave my house, and he started bellowing about how I had invited him over and could not rescind the hospitality he was due, and which point I told him that if he didn't either leave or calm down I would call the cops, he continued, and so I made good on my threat and had him removed from my house by the police and cut all ties with him.


These four things really showed me that there is something toxic in the core of my gaming group that goes beyond "poor communication" or even "being a bad GM"*. I think most of it boils down to, something between immaturity and paranoia, where everyone constantly thinks everyone else is out to get them and blames every failure on someone else, and is getting increasingly hostile and aggressive about it. And I legitimately don't know what to do.

This letter was an attempt to neutrally explain the situation without laying blame, but is being read as threatening, which is the exact opposite of the impression I am trying to get across.




*Also note that even though I am usually the GM, we do rotate on occasion, and it doesn't matter who is DMing or what game we are playing, similar conflicts still arise.

Honestly, what you are trying to do here is asking a bunch of unqualified strangers on the internet to mediate a conflict between you and your players, without the players even being present and able to tell their side of the issues. You won't find the solution here; we don't have a magic button that changes your players into the type of players you want to have. This can only be solved by both parties being involved and finding a compromise. Your letter was basically you throwing your issues at the players and telling them to stop acting like they do without any attempt to address their issues. You're telling them that everything they complain about is wrong, invalid, and not your fault. That might or might not be true, but either way it is not conductive to solving your conflict. Both sides need to feel that they've been heard and understood for that.
You need to sit down with your players and work the situation out with them on an equal basis; and yes, you might need someone neutral to mediate the conflict so it doesn't devolve into more thrown miniatures. But that someone cannot be an internet forum, and it's entirely possible that the issues are too deeply rooted to be solved

Quertus
2021-06-27, 06:11 AM
On a related note, I was talking about how people who calibrate their type and level of specialization with the size of the group will keep everyone from getting bored, and people were acting like this was a conscious decision on my part to punish players for the wrong character rather than a natural outcome of the game.

To illustrate in super simplified way:

If you have a party where:
One guy has a high charisma and agility, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has a high dexterity and endurance, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has a high intelligence and perception, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has an extreme strength and low scores in the other seven attributes.
And one guy has an above average score in all eight attributes.

Does it make sense that the latter two people will, on average over time, only have the spotlight half as often as the first three?

Does it make sense? No. Not at all. Because there *really* ought to be more to a character than their stats. And I mean both "other buttons to push", from class / skills / items / contacts / etc, and "have a personality". Spotlight sharing isn't as trivially simple as looking at a few stats - if it were, we wouldn't have meaningful discussions about it.

Further, it's at least somewhat system dependent just how those stats will work out.

But, most importantly, spotlight isn't just yes/no binary. I personally divide it into… huh. Darn senility. I don't remember how I divide it. Probably something like… solo / shine / share / show / something.

1) you have the spotlight 100%; no one else can be seen. Standard procedure in ShadowRun.

2) although the others are still visible on stage, you are clearly the MPV / star of the show.

3) you and everyone else at this level are all equal costars. No-one shines brighter (although some *may* be at a lower level).

4) you're on stage as supporting cast. You contributed.

5) you're not in this scene.

What kind of spotlight distribution those stats will favor in your system, and what distribution your players care about, will affect the answer to your question.


Here's the thing though, bad communication is far from a universal, and in my experience has a lot more with the context and attitude the reader brings to it than actual trouble communicating on anyone's fault.

Yes and no.

If we're discussing encounter building, and I scream, Die, Talakeal, die!, should I be confused if people don't realize I'm talking about polyhedrons of Arangee? (That's dice, folks, but in the singular) Isn't it fair to say that, "use the dice, Luke" would have been clearer, and (unless your name actually is Luke) that there were even clearer ways I could have worded what I meant?

The issue here is, you've got decades of experience telling you that your players misinterpret things that you say, and act explosively immaturely as a result. Responding to that with, "but *anything* can be misinterpreted" is… well, I don't know *what* it is, but I'm quite confident throwing it in the "bad" pile even if I don't know its name.

But you're right. Attitude and preconceived notions are very important here.

Want to change their attitude? Start by *not* adopting a "you're an idiot if you don't understand me" attitude while creating content as *obviously* broken as "cannot be killed by violence" or "die, Talakeal, die!".

(Note that I'm a **** who's all about the proper use of, "you're an idiot if you cannot see this" for *properly built* puzzles. So, if I tell my evil overlord mandated 5-year-old advisor substitute "a) any valid solution will be accepted - there is not just 1 right answer; b) the Avatar of Hate cannot be killed; C) it splits like Hydra heads when attacked dealt enough damage to kill it: d) it cannot leave the temple; e) it is otherwise just a guy; F) it is guarding the McGuffin as the final encounter of the temple dungeon, what do you do?", I expect that they will give me *lots* of solutions. You should try this with your group - in particular, with "the new guy", who *wasn't* around for this debacle, and *preface* it with saying, "I want to try an experiment regarding a new style of communication and encounter-building", and then go on to make sure everyone else knows not to get involved before stating the puzzle. Oh, and make this whole conversation a Text Box. Let us know how this experiment turns out.)

(EDIT: my evil overlord mandated 5-year-old advisor substitute said incapacitate it (paralyze, stun, freeze, subdue, sing him to sleep), taunt him away from the McGuffin, distract him and grab the McGuffin, fly away, negotiate (missed that one in my description, oops), "super tank" / invincible bubble, "lure him away with treats", teleport him (out of the temple if possible?), cut your losses (find a new McGuffin), get other people to get the McGuffin for you, blind him, fill the temple(?), grab the McGuffin and run ("that one's too obvious"))

(Also, my evil overlord mandated 5-year-old advisor substitute displayed great incredulity when I explained the original puzzle, and that the original party died trying to rearrange his furniture / snuggle him to death (like bees!))


Edit:

Ok, wait. Can you explain this claim to me with some specifics?

I mean, sure, any wording can be twisted; but how is asking guests to be mature and not throw tantrums when things don't do their way and explaining basic facts about the difficulty curve of my game to set realistic expectations completely out of line?


But it is bad as a rule. Because in every case where players don't want to do those things, there are serious underlying problems at the table that have to be solved first. If you ever have a situation in which your players don't want to play your adventure, that is not solved by "But you have to, that is your role as player".

That's definitely part of it, yes.

I'm no good at wording these things, but… actually, I haven't found a way to word any explanation of it where I'm not out of line myself (because that's how I explain things - with examples). So, unless I come up with a good roasting spoof of the letter, it's probably best I leave it to the much better expansions of others.

EDIT:
This can only be solved by both parties being involved and finding a compromise. Your letter was basically you throwing your issues at the players and telling them to stop acting like they do without any attempt to address their issues. You're telling them that everything they complain about is wrong, invalid, and not your fault. That might or might not be true, but either way it is not conductive to solving your conflict. Both sides need to feel that they've been heard and understood for that.
You need to sit down with your players and work the situation out with them on an equal basis; and yes, you might need someone neutral to mediate the conflict so it doesn't devolve into more thrown miniatures.

Hey, look, ninjas have explained another big part of what I meant!

If someone spills acid on themselves in chemistry class, and is screaming in pain, I don't respond with, "you had the agency to do whatever you wanted with that acid", and walk away with my hands in my ears saying "lalalala" to (pretend to) not hear their screams.

That was a "lalalala" letter. Rather the opposite of what the table needs, IMO.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-27, 06:59 AM
Some of the responses to my letter seemed to indicate that I was overstepping my bounds by asking that all players create characters who are motivated to stick with their party and complete the adventure. Is this really too much to ask?

The answer to that hinges on another question:

Do your players know what the adventure IS?

Typical tabletop RPGs - indeed, even most computerized RPGS - are games of hidden information. The player does not know going in what is going to happen over the course of the adventure. Hence the natural way to play such games is to make predictions of how the game is going to go at each decision prompt and quit the adventure, or quit the game altogether, once you cannot find the motivation to suffer through any of the predicted outcomes. It is impossible to create a character except by accident who can be motivated to do everything in an adventure without already knowing how the adventure is going to go, and it's impossible for a player to stick to any such character if its sufficiently opposite to their own inclinations.

Funnily enough, a founding classic of fantasy genre, the Lord of the Rings, talks about this in the text. To paraphrase Elrond's parting words to the Fellowship: "Swear no oath. Let none of you go further than you will." That is, on the face of uncertain future, don't fault anyone for failing to commit absolutely.


In my last campaign, it was like pulling teeth just to get the PCs to spend each session doing the following:

1: Go to the dungeon.
2: Kill monsters.
3: Talk to NPCs and try and recruit allies.
4: Use skills to overcome obstacles.
5: Collect treasure.
6: Return to town once the dungeon is explored or you are out of resources.

I promised the PCs that if they did the following nothing bad would ever happen to their characters. But even such a simple gameplay loop caused no end of trouble.

I'll start from the end: "nothing bad" is not an incentive! Character death is an incentive (that is, there is incentive for players who don't want their characters to die to act to avoid it). Character wealth is an incentive (that is, there is incentive for players who want rich characters to act to pursue it). "Nothing bad" is a vague promise that characters won't have a net gain less than zero, but it doesn't actually promise anything that could create motivation in their players.

Now, let's go to the previous point: did players know what's in the dungeon? Did they know what the monsters are? Did they know a reason to kill the monsters? Did they know who the NPCs are? Did they know which NPCs were helpful? Did they know which obstacles they must pass to get to any goal? Did they know what the treasure was? Did they know returning to town was an option? Did they know there was anything useful in the town to return for?

Even a single no means it was impossible for your players to create characters that would absolutely commit to that gameplay loop, except by accident. Every no is a point where at least some player/character combinations would state "This is not what I signed up for!" and go their own way.


For an even more extreme example, back when we first started gaming everyone would make their characters in isolation, and then we would, as a group, agonize for hours about a possible way that all of these disparate characters could be motivated to join the party, let alone go on the adventure the DM wanted to run, and even though everyone wanted to game, most of the time it will fall apart after the first session due to lack of compatible motivations amongst the characters.

Classic beginner mistake. There is in fact no possible way to guarantee co-operation between arbitrary individually crafted characters made without knowledge of the other characters. Game theoretically, it is a form of Prisoner's Dilemma. You either have to change character creation procedure so it's not a Prisoner's Dilemma (for example create your characters at the table when everyone is present) or have your players read enough game theory (actual mathematical game theory, not what ever idiosyncratic nonsense hobbyists peddle amongst each other) that they realize they'll have to restrict their characters to a set of super-rational characters who will always open with co-operation in a game of extended Prisoner's Dilemmas.


On a related note, I was talking about how people who calibrate their type and level of specialization with the size of the group will keep everyone from getting bored, and people were acting like this was a conscious decision on my part to punish players for the wrong character rather than a natural outcome of the game.

To illustrate in super simplified way:

If you have a party where:
One guy has a high charisma and agility, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has a high dexterity and endurance, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has a high intelligence and perception, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has an extreme strength and low scores in the other seven attributes.
And one guy has an above average score in all eight attributes.

Does it make sense that the latter two people will, on average over time, only have the spotlight half as often as the first three?

Yes. There are power laws that ubiquitously affect functions of complex systems, such as the Pareto principle. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle#In_sports)

To put it differently, it takes constant fine-tuning to ensure that entities with different abilities will actually contribute equally in a complex game. That kind of equality of outcome is extremely rare in nature. But it's completely impossible to make your players appreciate such a thing or even accept that it is true unless they already understand that it is indeed a natural phenomenon.

---

TL;DR: Never ask absolute commitment from any player or character if you are unwilling or unable to give them absolutely all the facts. Accept that sometimes character motivations don't match, let those characters go their separate ways and make new ones. Accept that sometimes player motivations don't match, let those players go their separate ways and find new ones.

Talakeal
2021-06-27, 09:06 AM
Seven pages of feedback and advice that you don’t really seem to have taken on board. I’ll make it easy for you.

Speaking as a DM with 30 years of experience.

Ready?

You have one job as a DM. Create a setting and a story that is fun and engaging for your players.

Forget all this nonsense about warning players, setting boundaries, threatening (yes, it comes across as threatening) NPC competence, etc etc.

I read how you view your role as DM and all I can think is… jeez… it would be hell to play in a game run like this.

Stop taking yourself so seriously, and run a fun game that both you and your players can enjoy.

So, I have had a long and sleepless night, and I really am interested in some elaboration here, because your post was big on emotion but very scarce on detail.

I am really curious about what it is you are reacting to, and whether it is something that I actually do, or something that you are imagining based on a certain reading of what I am saying; because in many cases they are completely opposite.

I have also been gaming for about thirty years now on both sides of the screen (not that that's a great brag, in my experience older gamers just get crankier and more set in their ways rather than actually improving with experience) and I find that there are two types of GMs:

1: Those who keep everything on rails, try and impress people by having everything be over the top and super impressive, and who will fudge, metagame, and play monsters really dumb to make sure that everything stays on script.

2: Those who set up the world*, play the NPCs due to their knowledge, motivations, and intelligence, and then let the dice fall where they may.

In my experience the second is almost always more fun, and that is definitely the play-style I try and lean into.


Its hard for me to comprehend how playing under a DM who plans out the world beforehand, uses a variety of CR appropriate enemies, follows the encounters per day guidelines in the books, plays NPCs based on their in character competence, and lets the dice fall where they may feels like Hell.

But again, your post was very vague. You might not have been referring to that at all, but instead talking about frequency of PC death, too much concern for crunch and balance, coaching the players, counseling the players, or a dozen other things my letter / post touched upon.


*: Whether they set up the world based on simulationist or gamist concerns is also a spectrum, often related to Combat as War vs Combat as Sport


That depends on system, campaign and other things. It is not possible to extrapolate spotlight just from that.

But the ideal would be that the last two people get exactly as much spotlight as the rest. If your system allows to build one-trick-ponies and jack-of-all-trades, then both those concepts should be viable choices and not better or worse than the rest. Of course, it is hard to build a system this way and most fail, but that should very much be the intended goal.

If you want to build the system in a way that the first 4 are just better than the last two, you would be better served removing the last two options. No one needs intentional trap options.

Its not a trap per se; its recognizing that as the group gets larger, specialization becomes more and more attractive.

Character four would be great in a big party, while character five would be great in a small party.

Kind of like how in D&D style games, ideally, classes are equally balanced in a vacuum, but a well-balanced party is more effective than one where everyone plays the same character / role.


Outside of very special games that is something players should always strife for, yes.

But it is bad as a rule. Because in every case where players don't want to do those things, there are serious underlying problems at the table that have to be solved first. If you ever have a situation in which your players don't want to play your adventure, that is not solved by "But you have to, that is your role as player".
And you still can't understand why or tell us the reason.

If you as a player don't want to go on the adventure, that is an OOC conversation that needs to happen before the game.

But once you, as a player, have agreed to play the game, I don't think its out of line to have a rule demanding that you need to make a character who would be motivated to go on the adventure as it was agreed upon.


And you still can't understand why or tell us the reason.

Is that a question or a statement?

Like, are you saying that you have it figured out and I am clueless, or are you asking if I understand it?

In either case, I have a pretty good guess below, feel free to correct or comment on it.


It continues to beg the question, "What do your players want to do?"
Which parts of that equation are they interested in? Which ones do they enjoy (not the same as interested in, seriously)?

I have gone into this more in my other threads, but in short:

Ok, so in my last game they would would give up and go back to town the moment things got even slightly difficult. Their explanation was that their characters didn't want to take the risk. My response was to make the game safer, but I don't think that actually addressed what was really going on.

Basically, I balance the game so that the players resources will be sufficient to give them a 95% chance of victory, assuming neither side makes a huge mistake.

But they realized that if they could go back and rest constantly and find ways to roll their resources forward, they could break ahead of the balance curve to the point where they could brute force the mission 100% of the time regardless of mistakes and therefore not have to worry about poor dice rolls or put any effort into their tactics.

In short, the idea of playing a brave hero who faces the unknown was sub-optimal from a game-play perspective compared to someone who alternated between shrewd coward and reckless OP idiot.


To use a real life analogy, it is kind of like a department who is intentionally wasteful with their money so that their budget gets increased every year.


If someone spills acid on themselves in chemistry class, and is screaming in pain, I don't respond with, "you had the agency to do whatever you wanted with that acid", and walk away with my hands in my ears saying "lalalala" to (pretend to) not hear their screams.

That was a "lalalala" letter. Rather the opposite of what the table needs, IMO.

Maybe not the best example.

I actually work in a lab, and handle acids (and bases) on a daily basis. And I never wear gloves because the constant heat and discomfort are not, in my mind, worth protecting myself from the occasional burn. And when I do spill acid on my hands, as happens occasionally, I don't run around complaining to people, because if I did, they would absolutely react by giving me a lecture about proper lab safety.

But, again, its not about sympathy or soothing injured people, its about recognizing that not everything is a conspiracy against you; I am pretty sure we both agree that the person who spilled acid should not run around shouting about how his co-workers engineered the accident to hurt him and then throwing acid in their faces as revenge, right?

Also, "lalalala" implies the letter is merely indifferent and ignoring the real issue, where as most of the previous criticism has focused on how it embraces the vindictive all powerful GM by threatening them for misbehaving and telling them I will absolutely cheat and make them suffer. Which is it?


Yes and no.

If we're discussing encounter building, and I scream, Die, Talakeal, die!, should I be confused if people don't realize I'm talking about polyhedrons of Arangee? (That's dice, folks, but in the singular) Isn't it fair to say that, "use the dice, Luke" would have been clearer, and (unless your name actually is Luke) that there were even clearer ways I could have worded what I meant?

The issue here is, you've got decades of experience telling you that your players misinterpret things that you say, and act explosively immaturely as a result. Responding to that with, "but *anything* can be misinterpreted" is… well, I don't know *what* it is, but I'm quite confident throwing it in the "bad" pile even if I don't know its name.

But you're right. Attitude and preconceived notions are very important here.

Want to change their attitude? Start by *not* adopting a "you're an idiot if you don't understand me" attitude while creating content as *obviously* broken as "cannot be killed by violence" or "die, Talakeal, die!".

Here's the thing though; your dice example is both lacking context and poor grammar, unless we are are suddenly quoting The Simpsons in German, while my statement of "Cannot be killed by violence" is a straightforward fact plainly stated that, ironically, only tricked my players because they were expecting to be tricked.

Neither of those is like NichG's reading of my letter, which, while grammatically correct, is not something that I intended or any of my in person readers have thought; and while it would have been a great thing to workshop and clarify, its not a great point to prove the letter is threatening; although now I am regretting creating this thread at all because I now have zero people I actually know IRL who take the letter as a threat but am still fighting with a bunch of randos on the internet about it.





Does it make sense? No. Not at all. Because there *really* ought to be more to a character than their stats. And I mean both "other buttons to push", from class / skills / items / contacts / etc, and "have a personality". Spotlight sharing isn't as trivially simple as looking at a few stats - if it were, we wouldn't have meaningful discussions about it.

Further, it's at least somewhat system dependent just how those stats will work out.

But, most importantly, spotlight isn't just yes/no binary. I personally divide it into… huh. Darn senility. I don't remember how I divide it. Probably something like… solo / shine / share / show / something.

1) you have the spotlight 100%; no one else can be seen. Standard procedure in ShadowRun.

2) although the others are still visible on stage, you are clearly the MPV / star of the show.

3) you and everyone else at this level are all equal costars. No-one shines brighter (although some *may* be at a lower level).

4) you're on stage as supporting cast. You contributed.

5) you're not in this scene.

What kind of spotlight distribution those stats will favor in your system, and what distribution your players care about, will affect the answer to your question.

I think you may be overthinking this; do note I was intentionally talking about the most base level to avoid muddying the water.


snip

In that specific case, the pitch was that it was going to be a relatively simple game about exploring the wilderness, killing monsters, and finding treasure.

The specific was that they were part of a family dynasty founded by a great hero in a city that was slowly falling into decline, surrounded by ruins and under threat of invasion. Their motivation was to save their city and their dynasty by destroying enemies and recruiting allies, and to become rich and powerful so that they could become the heroes that was the right of their bloodline.

Not exactly Shakespeare, and their reason for refusing adventure was simply that they felt that it was an unnecessary gamble compared to the stability provided by remaining in town and using trade-skills. Of course, they showed no interest in actually playing out a game in town, which I would have been overjoyed to get a chance to run for a change.


Yes. There are power laws that ubiquitously affect functions of complex systems, such as the Pareto principle. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle#In_sports)

To put it differently, it takes constant fine-tuning to ensure that entities with different abilities will actually contribute equally in a complex game. That kind of equality of outcome is extremely rare in nature. But it's completely impossible to make your players appreciate such a thing or even accept that it is true unless they already understand that it is indeed a natural phenomenon.

Right.

This is something that I have observed in decades of playtesting my game; that it is a natural result of the system that in a medium sized party characters who over or under specialize tend to have less spotlight time and get bored, and I was trying to advise my players to this, but most people who read the letter seemed to think I was demanding that people play a certain character type and threatening to punish them otherwise.

Honestly, the letter is serving as kind of an ironic microcosm of the issue it was trying to address; people are seeing malice and punishment rather than a natural outcome of the game mechanics and reacting with indignation and outrage.


Honestly, what you are trying to do here is asking a bunch of unqualified strangers on the internet to mediate a conflict between you and your players, without the players even being present and able to tell their side of the issues. You won't find the solution here; we don't have a magic button that changes your players into the type of players you want to have. This can only be solved by both parties being involved and finding a compromise. Your letter was basically you throwing your issues at the players and telling them to stop acting like they do without any attempt to address their issues. You're telling them that everything they complain about is wrong, invalid, and not your fault. That might or might not be true, but either way it is not conductive to solving your conflict. Both sides need to feel that they've been heard and understood for that.
You need to sit down with your players and work the situation out with them on an equal basis; and yes, you might need someone neutral to mediate the conflict so it doesn't devolve into more thrown miniatures. But that someone cannot be an internet forum, and it's entirely possible that the issues are too deeply rooted to be solved

Its not about wrong, invalid, or not my fault, or about mediation.

Its about recognizing that everything that happens in the game is the result of a combination of my decisions; both tactical and in designing the system / adventure, their decisions; tactical, strategic, and in character design, the other players decisions in those three areas, and the dice; and that they need to stop fixating on one of those things and immaturely lashing out at it in various ways.

The problem was that the letter only fed into their "paranoia", being read as gloating over my position as the all-powerful overlord of everything and threatening them if they stepped out of line, and I was hoping to workshop it into something that better conveyed my point.


The 5-point plan

A couple of questions if I may:

1: What would actually fall into a "black box" encounter?
2: Are the notes about black boxes about problems, or solutions?
3: Is this intended for a one shot, a short term solution, or a new long term way of running games?
4: At what point do I hand out stat cards?

I don't really like the idea of handing out NPC stat cards simply because it punishes players who invested in lore, reconnaissance, and analytical skills. I am also concerned that it will exacerbate the problem when the players notice an inevitable mistake (can you imagine the poop-show if I had forgotten to mark down the fomorians sneeze ability?) and also because it can lead to weird metagaming, for example one time I did this in the past the party noticed that there was a lake monster one of the cards and spent the entire session actively avoiding every body of water they came across.

Also, speaking of the "sneeze ogre"; I didn't say I thought it was a "perfect riddle", I said that ideally the foreshadowing would have been obvious in retrospect in the same way that a good riddle was. Also, I strongly doubt the player in question even heard the flavor text as he tends to zone out during descriptions.

So, let me ask how you would handle two encounters in my last game that ended up being somewhat problematic, but not for the reasons you might think:

1: A giantess who is secretly a were-snake. She attempts to fight the players in her normal form, but once it is obvious they are too strong for her, she gives in to the beast and transforms. In essence, it is a classic two phase boss fight.

2: A group of hobgoblin sailors who are training in front of a complex that the PCs need to enter. They are standard hobgoblins, albeit of a bit higher level than most. They are described as "A squad of hobgoblin sailors, drilling with such discipline and precision their skill puts the navy of Meridia to shame. Still, it is obvious their morale hangs by a thread; their long exile has left them exhausted and it is obvious that they no longer have even a glimmer of genuine belief in their cause."

There is a large tiki mask overhanging the courtyard. The players have already found several like it, and upon detecting scrying magic coming from them, have destroyed them. They don't know exactly what they do, but they allow the Hobgoblin's master (whom the PCs have come to kill) to look through them.

The hobgoblins do not start out aware of the PCs, and they can be ambushed or snuck past. If the PCs try and talk them into mutiny, they will point to the tiki mask and tell them that they are fools ito suggest treason under the very eyes of their master and point toward the tiki mask. If the mask is destroyed, or if their master is already dead, the hobgoblins can easily be talked into joining the PCs and aiding them in their cause.

False God
2021-06-27, 11:31 AM
I have gone into this more in my other threads, but in short:

Ok, so in my last game they would would give up and go back to town the moment things got even slightly difficult. Their explanation was that their characters didn't want to take the risk. My response was to make the game safer, but I don't think that actually addressed what was really going on.
I doubt the actual difficulty was the issue. I sounds to me more like the players did not have a driving reason to push forward. While it may be annoying, IMO: let them, with the understanding that if they leave, the dungeon will not remain as they left it. Paths may change, new enemies may move in, old enemies may move out.


Basically, I balance the game so that the players resources will be sufficient to give them a 95% chance of victory, assuming neither side makes a huge mistake.
Maybe it's too easy? I balance my game around a ~70/30 success/failure chance, and that's "normal". "Difficult" is ~60/40, "dangerous" is ~50/50 and "deadly" is ~30/70.


But they realized that if they could go back and rest constantly and find ways to roll their resources forward, they could break ahead of the balance curve to the point where they could brute force the mission 100% of the time regardless of mistakes and therefore not have to worry about poor dice rolls or put any effort into their tactics.
To be honest, with a 95% chance of success, I don't see how they couldn't end up with that result. They'd literally have to nat 1 all the time to fail.


In short, the idea of playing a brave hero who faces the unknown was sub-optimal from a game-play perspective compared to someone who alternated between shrewd coward and reckless OP idiot.
Again, maybe your game is too easy.

Satinavian
2021-06-27, 11:36 AM
If you as a player don't want to go on the adventure, that is an OOC conversation that needs to happen before the game.

But once you, as a player, have agreed to play the game, I don't think its out of line to have a rule demanding that you need to make a character who would be motivated to go on the adventure as it was agreed upon.
If I were ever in a situation where i did not want to play the adventure, i would have proper reasons for not wanting to play the adventure and would want those adressed before playing. Similarly for everyone else, which is why I don't see how such a rule could ever be beneficial.

In fact, if I were in a session 0 and a prospective GM would suggest such a rule, I would strongly suspect that he has reasons to suspect we would not want to play the adventure. Reasons he does not share with us like wanting to do some stupid bait-and-switch campaign where the premise is completely diferent from what actually happens. And thus I would never agree to such a rule.


I mean, maybe i lack imagination, but i simply can't think of a situation where
a) I really don't want to play the adventure
b) Playing it anyway is a good and enjoyable experience
can ever be both true. So why a rule forcing people to be part of activities they don't like ?



Is that a question or a statement?

Like, are you saying that you have it figured out and I am clueless, or are you asking if I understand it?

In either case, I have a pretty good guess below, feel free to correct or comment on it.No, I have no clue about your players. How you describe them is completely incoherent and nonsensical. Partly because switching from individual to indivudual and group to group without explicitely telling us, but even more because you really have not understood your players in the first place.

In the past I sometimes guessed what could make their behavior explainable but you always disagreed. So i am not doing that anymore.

kyoryu
2021-06-27, 11:45 AM
In my experience it is virtually impossible to say something that can't be misinterpreted, and often times people's preconceived notions are more important than what is said. For example, I have shown the letter to five people irl, one of them thought it was about killing PCs, three of them read it as intended, one of them couldn't make it out at all, and none of them have read NichG's particularly horrifying interpretation about threatening punishment.

So what you need to do is switch to a closed loop communication style vs. open loop.

Open loop:
Talakeal says something.
People interpret it.
End.

Closed loop:
Talakeal says something.
People interpret it, and state their interpretation
Talakeal clarifieds
People take the clarification, and restate interpretation
... repeat until clarity is reached.

One of the tricks for this is making sure that the interpretation is always stated using different words and getting to specifics. The more you get into statements of "if this happens, this is what would be the result" the better, as opposed to using words that themselves can be interpreted as having different meanings.

Open loop styles (which all of your examples were) are inherently easy to have miscommunication. A closed loop allows iteration on the understanding and correction of any misunderstandings.


Likewise, the story about the avatar of violence doesn't involve poor communication per se, it was about two players going into the situation assuming I was trying to trick them rather than taking my statement at face value, and then blaming me for meta-tricking them by not trying to trick them.

Since the statement was given OOC, again a closed loop would have been useful, or at least you taking the time to clarify the OOC info since you have the privileged position of having your understanding being canonically correct.

Talakeal
2021-06-27, 12:08 PM
If I were ever in a situation where i did not want to play the adventure, i would have proper reasons for not wanting to play the adventure and would want those adressed before playing. Similarly for everyone else, which is why I don't see how such a rule could ever be beneficial.

In fact, if I were in a session 0 and a prospective GM would suggest such a rule, I would strongly suspect that he has reasons to suspect we would not want to play the adventure. Reasons he does not share with us like wanting to do some stupid bait-and-switch campaign where the premise is completely different from what actually happens. And thus I would never agree to such a rule.

I mean, maybe i lack imagination, but i simply can't think of a situation where
a) I really don't want to play the adventure
b) Playing it anyway is a good and enjoyable experience
can ever be both true. So why a rule forcing people to be part of activities they don't like ?

Its not about forcing people to do something they don't want to do or about bait and switch. Its about people creating characters that don't fit with the game or create conflict with the party. If I openly say I am running a heroic campaign, the guy who plays a CE assassin isn't welcome, nor the guy who plays a paladin in a villainous campaign. Cowards and homebodies have no place in an adventure / exploration game. Someone who can't leave his home and family won't work in a globe-trotting game, and a pirate who won't leave his ship won't work for a game in the middle of the desert. If my game is in the old west, you shouldn't play someone who will never leave central Asia.

I have had too many experiences were someone made a character whom the DM / other players had to spend a half hour each session trying to talk them to come along on the adventure, and often demanding bribes or flat out betraying them if it doesn't work. Normally, its because they are playing up a character flaw, like a greedy rogue or a lazy nobleman, or an edgy loner, or a cowardly halfling, or whatever, but its a waste of everyone else's time. Especially if they expect me to simultaneously run a solo adventure for them if they refuse to go along on the main adventure.

Like, the last game I was a player in, the GM didn't give anyone any guidance and everyone made their characters in a vacuum. I remade my character twice to be a better fit with the party, and still spent the first two sessions begging and pleading with them to form a party and take the adventure hook. Of course, I still got to be the bad guy because, when they kept rejecting every bribe I could offer them by saying "wouldn't it be easier to just kill my character and take my stuff," I said fine, have it your way, and abandoned them mid dungeon, where they all died and blamed me for the TPK. That crap isn't fun for anyone.


My new campaign has the following pitch:

All PCs are employees of a mercenary company located in the Golgotha region, and the game will be about fulfilling contracts for a wide variety of clients. All characters must be created with the skills, motivation, and moral flexibility to remain in such a position.

Now, I don't think anyone would find a good faith reading of that guideline to be unreasonable (although you, like my players, seem to be on the lookout for trickery) unless someone has a very specific character already in mind.



I doubt the actual difficulty was the issue. I sounds to me more like the players did not have a driving reason to push forward. While it may be annoying, IMO: let them, with the understanding that if they leave, the dungeon will not remain as they left it. Paths may change, new enemies may move in, old enemies may move out.


Maybe it's too easy? I balance my game around a ~70/30 success/failure chance, and that's "normal". "Difficult" is ~60/40, "dangerous" is ~50/50 and "deadly" is ~30/70.


To be honest, with a 95% chance of success, I don't see how they couldn't end up with that result. They'd literally have to nat 1 all the time to fail.


Again, maybe your game is too easy.

While I tend to agree that my games are easier than most (barring the totally on rails one's where the DM fudges everything so you can't fail) I don't think many of my players or people who have been following my threads on the forum would agree.

Do note though, that the 95% is for the mission as a whole rather than any one roll.


No, I have no clue about your players. How you describe them is completely incoherent and nonsensical. Partly because switching from individual to indivudual and group to group without explicitely telling us, but even more because you really have not understood your players in the first place.

I don't think I have switched from group to group. I have only posted about the same group for the last ~4 years, and before that I made a pretty big deal about leaving my group.

Satinavian
2021-06-27, 01:00 PM
Its not about forcing people to do something they don't want to do or about bait and switch. Its about people creating characters that don't fit with the game or create conflict with the party. If I openly say I am running a heroic campaign, the guy who plays a CE assassin isn't welcome, nor the guy who plays a paladin in a villainous campaign. Cowards and homebodies have no place in an adventure / exploration game. Someone who can't leave his home and family won't work in a globe-trotting game, and a pirate who won't leave his ship won't work for a game in the middle of the desert. If my game is in the old west, you shouldn't play someone who will never leave central Asia.That is true. It is also something you normally don't need rules for. And if you have players behaving differently, a rule won't fix it.

I have had too many experiences were someone made a character whom the DM / other players had to spend a half hour each session trying to talk them to come along on the adventure, and often demanding bribes or flat out betraying them if it doesn't work. Normally, its because they are playing up a character flaw, like a greedy rogue or a lazy nobleman, or an edgy loner, or a cowardly halfling, or whatever, but its a waste of everyone else's time. Especially if they expect me to simultaneously run a solo adventure for them if they refuse to go along on the main adventure.Yes, that is annoying. I won't say i have never seen it, but i would say that is quite rare. Also that is something you talk about when it actually occurs, then the player modifies the character or changes the character.

If you have a player who does it repeatedly with several characters, you kick them. There really are players who want to see others squirm and beg them to play the game. Your time is too valuable for that nonsense and a compromise won't ever work as they derive pleasure from your making games unpleasant for others. It is a special form of bullying. A rule won't help. Kick them and never invite them again.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-27, 02:15 PM
In that specific case, the pitch was that it was going to be a relatively simple game about exploring the wilderness, killing monsters, and finding treasure.

Relatively simple, as compared to?


The specific was that they were part of a family dynasty founded by a great hero in a city that was slowly falling into decline, surrounded by ruins and under threat of invasion. Their motivation was to save their city and their dynasty by destroying enemies and recruiting allies, and to become rich and powerful so that they could become the heroes that was the right of their bloodline.

Not exactly Shakespeare, and their reason for refusing adventure was simply that they felt that it was an unnecessary gamble compared to the stability provided by remaining in town and using trade-skills. Of course, they showed no interest in actually playing out a game in town, which I would have been overjoyed to get a chance to run for a change.

The tragedy of this situation is that your players can clearly figure out motivations that would make sense for their characters and that you'd be motivated to play out, but they themselves are not motivated to play it out. I would say your players played themselves (they made a risk-reward-assessment only to find the best risk-to-reward ratio would be boring to them), but there's an even more tragic possibility. You've said elsewhere that some of your players are clinically depressed. Two major symptoms of depression are general lack of motivation and inability to derive joy from things you used to find enjoyable. Put differently, for at least some of your players, wanting and liking are disassociated. They may profess to want things, but they cannot feel any satisfaction for getting what they want. They may profess to like things, but cannot muster motivation for pursuing those things.

So one of the reasons you cannot make your players happy, is because making them happy would be tantamount to curing their depression.


Right.

This is something that I have observed in decades of playtesting my game; that it is a natural result of the system that in a medium sized party characters who over or under specialize tend to have less spotlight time and get bored, and I was trying to advise my players to this, but most people who read the letter seemed to think I was demanding that people play a certain character type and threatening to punish them otherwise.

Honestly, the letter is serving as kind of an ironic microcosm of the issue it was trying to address; people are seeing malice and punishment rather than a natural outcome of the game mechanics and reacting with indignation and outrage.

See, this gets back to my first, long post about agency in this thread. Let me quote the relevant part:


The second hick-up is that tabletop games require other people to process the game moves - a game master being the most obvious, though it's still true of games without such a role. In short: nothing actually happens in the game without approval and instantation by those other people, so those other people serve as convenient scapegoats for anything and everything in the game.

People are very bad at distinguishing negative feedback and positive feedback from punishments and rewards, especially when it comes to games, because in case of games an identifiable human is behind everything. Nothing is natural - everything is artificial. Intent can be purported to exist behind every game event and it is extremely difficult to prove otherwise. Indeed, you acknowledging the issue can be construed as evidence of intent.

There are ways out of that pit, but the most practical is "find new players who don't have an established metagame of roleplaying games, at least not for your games". Getting your existing players out of that pit requires completely dismantling and rebuilding their notions of burden of proof (among other things) and possibly solving genuine psychological issues, as noted above.

Batcathat
2021-06-27, 02:38 PM
People are very bad at distinguishing negative feedback and positive feedback from punishments and rewards, especially when it comes to games, because in case of games an identifiable human is behind everything. Nothing is natural - everything is artificial. Intent can be purported to exist behind every game event and it is extremely difficult to prove otherwise. Indeed, you acknowledging the issue can be construed as evidence of intent.

That's an interesting observation, I've never thought of it like that. If I fall and hurt myself in real life, I would blame bad luck or my own clumsiness, but if my character did the same in a game, I could (at least theoretically) blame the GM for putting me in that situation.


There are ways out of that pit, but the most practical is "find new players who don't have an established metagame of roleplaying games, at least not for your games". Getting your existing players out of that pit requires completely dismantling and rebuilding their notions of burden of proof (among other things) and possibly solving genuine psychological issues, as noted above.

I agree. I sometimes feel like people are too quick to advice "find new people to play with" in response to problems, but in this case I really doubt there's any other way.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-27, 03:52 PM
I agree. I sometimes feel like people are too quick to advice "find new people to play with" in response to problems, but in this case I really doubt there's any other way.

It's funny you should say that.

You see, my observation was made from a long line of people rapidly telling each other to find a new game master... as a response to a game master doing something unremarkable.

If this situation was reversed and I had one of Talakeal's players here complaining about Talakeal, I would tell them to first question their assumptions and metagame... but, given unwillingness or inability to do those, I would eventually tell them to find a different game master. Or just stop playing altogether. Just not quickly.

RandomPeasant
2021-06-27, 09:43 PM
I agree. I sometimes feel like people are too quick to advice "find new people to play with" in response to problems, but in this case I really doubt there's any other way.

I've been saying this for a while. I'll admit to only dipping in periodically (mostly to say exactly this), so maybe I'm missing how this is Talakeal's childhood best bud or the D&D group from his workplace or something, but it really seems like these people are just awful to play with and he should play with someone else. My recommendation would be to give up on getting your custom system to work and just find a group that you can run interesting adventures for. Hell, I'm pretty sure he'd have more fun publishing his ideas as a web serial somewhere than playing with his current group.

Morgaln
2021-06-28, 04:25 AM
Its not about wrong, invalid, or not my fault, or about mediation.

Its about recognizing that everything that happens in the game is the result of a combination of my decisions; both tactical and in designing the system / adventure, their decisions; tactical, strategic, and in character design, the other players decisions in those three areas, and the dice; and that they need to stop fixating on one of those things and immaturely lashing out at it in various ways.

The problem was that the letter only fed into their "paranoia", being read as gloating over my position as the all-powerful overlord of everything and threatening them if they stepped out of line, and I was hoping to workshop it into something that better conveyed my point.



You missed my point entirely. When your players scream, insult you, or throw miniatures, that is of course inacceptable behavior. But that is not the actual problem. It is only a symptom of your players being dissatisfied. They probably feel like they can't get their point through to you (whether consciously or unconsciously) and the fits are their frustration breaking out.

Again, absolutely not acceptable behavior. But I can confirm from this thread alone that your way of repeatedly saying "this is not so" can be frustrating and unlike your players, I don't have a personal investment in your games or the relationship between us.

You have issues with the way your players play the game. Your players have issues with the way you run the game. What you are trying to do is to tell the players that their issues are non-issues and then keep running things the way you have before. In other words, you want your players to change to fix your issues while not doing anything to try and fix the issues they have. That won't work. Your players need to feel that you take what they have to say serious. For that, you actually do need to take it serious to some extent, because unless you're an incredible actor, you won't be able to fake this convincingly.

For the very first step, it's not actually important whether your issues or their issues actually hold up to closer scrutiny. Each of you thinks they're valid complaints, and that's enough to cause trouble. No matter what letter you write, it won't fix it. In order to get this solved, you need to enter into a dialogue with your players. You both need to be able to air your grievances in a constructive manner, and you need to try and understand each other's points. Your players already have trust issues. If they don't think you are trying to legitimately understand where they are coming from, why should they trust you to fix the problems they see?

I know full well that this is hard. Not everyone can step out of their own viewpoint and look at things from a different angle. Likewise, not everyone is able to analyse what their actual grievances are. And if some of you are introverts that have trouble talking about their own feelings, it gets even more difficult. It is also entirely possible that (some of) your players are just immature jerks and you can't fix this. That's why a neutral third party can be helpful, since they can mediate without emotional baggage.

Tl;dr version: You cannot solve this alone. You need to involve your players and work out a compromise that adresses the problems on both sides.

Vegan Squirrel
2021-06-28, 10:10 AM
Okay, I've been slowly reading this thread for the last couple of days, and skipped the last page or so because I'll always be a day behind if I keep it up. So, just a few bullet point responses, most of which have already been stated by others.

Playing a TTRPG, playing games generally, is a leisure activity that should be fun. Adults should know how to get along. Throwing tantrums at your friends during play time is not normal, acceptable behavior. I would be shocked if this happened at a gaming table with my friends, with any of the groups I've played with. So the first suggestion is, stop considering these people friends, and stop playing with them. You're going to skip that suggestion because you'd rather play, even with this group, than not play. That's understandable. But everything stems from these toxic people who do not behave like adults. There's no easy solution, because the root of the problem is what they're doing as players, not what you're doing as GM (even when you do make mistakes, as all GMs will).
As to the request that players build characters who are motivated to work together and participate in the pitched campaign, that's a standard prerequisite to playing a TTRPG (outside of organized play and conventions where you just show up with a character, but even then it's implied). If your character isn't motivated to play with the group, then you haven't built an eligible character yet (that's not to say a character can't leave the party halfway through because of their character arc, and the player rolls up a replacement character). That's the core of the game's social contract.
It's been beaten to death, so just a quick comment on the original letter. I agree that the bullet points made for a better letter than the letter itself. It could have definitely been worded better, but much of what you wanted to say was evident in the letter. The tone was a bit off, and everyone assumed the tone would be taken even worse by your particular players because we have very low opinions of their ability to be reasonable. The one insight I have as to why the tone has been taken so poorly, is that, though you do state strengths will be strengths and weaknesses will be weaknesses, a lot of words are devoted to explaining how weaknesses will be targeted, characters will fail, and you won't save them. Just by word count alone, that makes that feel like a bigger focus of the letter.
I don't know what else to tell you, but I hope you find a fulfilling gaming experience through all of this effort.

Quertus
2021-06-28, 10:40 AM
It is impossible to create a character except by accident who can be motivated to do everything in an adventure without already knowing how the adventure is going to go

+1 this.

That said, there's a *lot* of variance in individual characters, groups of characters, and adventures, for how suitable they are.

For example, IME, the more well played the character, the better able the player will be to accurately predict how well the character will match a given adventure / party.


I find that there are two types of GMs:

1: Those who keep everything on rails, try and impress people by having everything be over the top and super impressive, and who will fudge, metagame, and play monsters really dumb to make sure that everything stays on script.

2: Those who set up the world*, play the NPCs due to their knowledge, motivations, and intelligence, and then let the dice fall where they may.

In my experience the second is almost always more fun, and that is definitely the play-style I try and lean into.


Its hard for me to comprehend how playing under a DM who plans out the world beforehand, uses a variety of CR appropriate enemies, follows the encounters per day guidelines in the books, plays NPCs based on their in character competence, and lets the dice fall where they may feels like Hell.

Just wanted to check, in the spectrum of "railroad" to "sandbox", you do know that you're describing components of each, without really describing either, right?

So I'm really not sure what to make of your "two types of GMs" comment.


*: Whether they set up the world based on simulationist or gamist concerns is also a spectrum, often related to Combat as War vs Combat as Sport

Oh now that is interesting. Gamist concerns is CaS; Simulationist concerns is CaW? You know, I'd never thought of it that way before, but I think you might be right.


If you as a player don't want to go on the adventure, that is an OOC conversation that needs to happen before the game.

But once you, as a player, have agreed to play the game, I don't think its out of line to have a rule demanding that you need to make a character who would be motivated to go on the adventure as it was agreed upon.

A… rule? There's not really scenarios where that would help.


But they realized that if they could go back and rest constantly and find ways to roll their resources forward, they could break ahead of the balance curve to the point where they could brute force the mission 100% of the time regardless of mistakes and therefore not have to worry about poor dice rolls or put any effort into their tactics.

In short, the idea of playing a brave hero who faces the unknown was sub-optimal from a game-play perspective compared to someone who alternated between shrewd coward and reckless OP idiot.

I don't play many brave heroes anymore - most of my brave heroes are dead. Your players seemingly weren't playing your idea of brave heroes. Either your players are bad at role-playing, or they didn't make brave heroes to begin with, or they realized that risking life and limb unnecessarily was just plain foolish. Kinda that "Gamist vs Simulationist" quandary. If you, IRL, were a brave hero, and there was a treasure in the middle of a swimming pool of acid, would you jump in to get it, or would you reach for the pool skimmer to try to acquire it safety?

It sounds like you have very good Gamist testers of your rules, who realized that only an idiot would ever behave the way you wanted them to behave in that situation.

So, if you wanted a rule here, it should be, "Talakeal will not get upset when we reach for a better solution. Talakeal will not mandate that we play whatever version of 'brave heroes' lives in his head."

This rule will help your players to test your rules and trust that you will not shoot the messenger of their feedback. To look for good solutions to their problems - like, say, running away from the Avatar of Hate, rather than obstinately, desperately trying to find a way to kill it because they believe that Talakeal believes that that's what a brave hero would do: kill it, or die trying.

So, if you want a rule, it should be, "Talakeal will abandon the notion of 'brave heroes' until the rest the group's (and system's) problems have been worked out". Because this kind of sentiment just clouds the waters and erodes the group's trust.


Maybe not the best example.

I actually work in a lab, and handle acids (and bases) on a daily basis. And I never wear gloves because the constant heat and discomfort are not, in my mind, worth protecting myself from the occasional burn. And when I do spill acid on my hands, as happens occasionally, I don't run around complaining to people, because if I did, they would absolutely react by giving me a lecture about proper lab safety.

But, again, its not about sympathy or soothing injured people, its about recognizing that not everything is a conspiracy against you; I am pretty sure we both agree that the person who spilled acid should not run around shouting about how his co-workers engineered the accident to hurt him and then throwing acid in their faces as revenge, right?

Also, "lalalala" implies the letter is merely indifferent and ignoring the real issue, where as most of the previous criticism has focused on how it embraces the vindictive all powerful GM by threatening them for misbehaving and telling them I will absolutely cheat and make them suffer. Which is it?

It is this one, it can be read as the other. It could trivially have been both.

Note how you never consider the severity of your co-worker's wounds, whether they need medical attention, etc. You've dismissed their injury as "discomfort", without actually evaluating it. Lalalala.

The point of "testing" is to give you, your group, and us, the tools to *evaluate* your group's issues, as well as the tools to *communicate* about those issues, and about solutions moving forward.


Here's the thing though; your dice example is both lacking context and poor grammar, unless we are are suddenly quoting The Simpsons in German, while my statement of "Cannot be killed by violence" is a straightforward fact plainly stated that, ironically, only tricked my players because they were expecting to be tricked.

Neither of those is like NichG's reading of my letter, which, while grammatically correct, is not something that I intended or any of my in person readers have thought; and while it would have been a great thing to workshop and clarify, its not a great point to prove the letter is threatening; although now I am regretting creating this thread at all because I now have zero people I actually know IRL who take the letter as a threat but am still fighting with a bunch of randos on the internet about it.

If we have stricter requirements for clear communication than your group, then that's a *good* thing.

Also… I'm not a grammar nazi, but if you tried to walk outside naked, and I screamed, "pants, Talakeal, pants!", would my grammar be wrong?

Lastly, you have this habit of throwing up a questionably-related single-tree distractions without touching the forest of the conversation. Is this something you do consciously? Are you even aware that you do it?


I think you may be overthinking this; do note I was intentionally talking about the most base level to avoid muddying the water.

Honestly, the letter is serving as kind of an ironic microcosm of the issue it was trying to address; people are seeing malice and punishment rather than a natural outcome of the game mechanics and reacting with indignation and outrage.

How many decades have you had the same problems with your games? Haven't these problems, if anything, only gotten worse? Wouldn't it be fair to suggest that, if anything, you might be underreacting?


A couple of questions if I may:

Absolutely! The day I don't want to answer questions from someone requesting help, well, let's hope that day never comes.


1: What would actually fall into a "black box" encounter?

Anything where the *point* is for the players to investigate / be creative. I mean, I *guess* you could hand them the Avatar of Hate stat block, but I view it as an investigation / puzzle monster, that's much more fun as an unknown.

More to the point, for simplicity, "black box" matches up with "text box". So, if it needs one, it gets the other.

I believe that you said previously that you only had 1 puzzle monster every couple of weeks. It's for them.


2: Are the notes about black boxes about problems, or solutions?

Notes?

The "text box" is every clue that the players need in order to solve the puzzle, multiple ways. Everything that they can learn in-character.

The encounter notes are everything that, say, *I* would need in order to run the encounter *exactly the same way as every other GM running this module* at a convention.

The "evil overlord mandated 5-year-old advisor" testing transcript… is for debugging. Yeah, that's it, debugging. "OK, when I gave my non-gamer parents this exact text, they came up with this list of solutions. When I gave random kids this exact text, they came up with this second list. Why didn't you guys see any of these options?"


3: Is this intended for a one shot, a short term solution, or a new long term way of running games?

Yes?

Your players commented… well, my interpretation is that they didn't like you changing the rules mid-game. And it's just good form anyway.

So the *optimal* use of this is for a one-shot test, to get feedback from your players.

Test goes well enough, they like it enough, it could become a "new long term way of running games". But I hope and suspect that either it will help you pinpoint the actual issues, fear and suspect that it won't be the *only* required test, and predict that some variant on *some* of the component will be used long-term, but most not.

But, more importantly, it should help facilitate a conversation about trust. And is designed to help you *build* trust.

(And a lot more. There's so many purposes to this test. But, given the "Bizarro World" level of disconnect many of us feel from your players' behavior, and the number of divergent hypothesis Playgrounders have put forth over the years, "a lot of purposes to tests" is to be expected from anything remotely likely to show results with mortal reasoning and comprehension.)

-----

That was worded poorly. Let me try again:

The ultimate goal is to make things better in your games. And that will definitely require some changes somewhere (most likely, some changes from everyone). So I certainly expect that there will be some permanent rules changes, and some permanent "way things are done" changes.

In the mid term, you need to build trust. So some changes may stick around as a bandaid, while the underlying wounds heal.

However, in the short term, there's *lots* of experiments one could try. Senility willing, I'll circle back to discussing stress and my "demigods of adventure" idea.

Right now, all these ideas are a test. I have my beliefs about which ones are best suited to being used mid or even long term, but… your group has been Bizarro World - I wouldn't be too surprised if they *beg* you to keep a feature that I would consider borderline toxic for a group long-term.

So, again, for now, they're short-term tests, things you're trying for a short adventure, to get their feedback on. And to tell us how things went, what *exactly* they complained about each session.

After the test, you ask them which features they'd like to see continue moving forward, and you prepare the next short adventure, which might also be the next test.

On the plus side, you're getting modules to go with your system "for free" by doing this. Just… don't make them all "level 1" modules :smallwink:


4: At what point do I hand out stat cards?

Ideally, the moment they see or hear of a white-box encounter/monster, or after they defeat any encounter.


I don't really like the idea of handing out NPC stat cards simply because it punishes players who invested in lore, reconnaissance, and analytical skills.

Lore? If you mean the equivalent of 3e Knowledge skills, I completely agree. That is why I expect that this particular aspect is a short-term gestalt test // trust-building exercise. And you can wean them off just handing them the cards by telling them that, going forward, you will hand them stat cards for the same set of monsters (ie, most of them) on a successful Knowledge check.

But reconnaissance, and analytical skills? Those are being highlighted - they are the *focus* of black-box encounters.

You've complained that your players are lacking in this regard - well, this is designed to *help* with that, by explicitly telling them, "hey, this is a black box - I've got text boxes here for you, if only you'll come looking for them".

Granted… and this is part of why there should be several tests… not to put too fine a point on it, but you're probably going to need to spoon-feed them the text boxes at first, rather than expect that they'll hunt them down, since they've had issues here before.

So, I was *trying* to keep this simple, but… if I were making it complicated, if *I* were running these tests? (Assuming you run about 4 encounters per session here; what do your actual numbers look like?)

I might open with a 3-session test. Each session would have 3 white-box encounters, and 1 black-box encounter. First session would provide *some* hints for session 3, and all the text boxes for the session 1 black-box. Session 2 would have optional session 3 text boxes, plus all session 2 text boxes. And session 3 would start with a recap, and finish off the text boxes.

I'll put an example at the bottom of the post.


I am also concerned that it will exacerbate the problem when the players notice an inevitable mistake (can you imagine the poop-show if I had forgotten to mark down the fomorians sneeze ability?)

Nope. You are only allowed to run the monster as you wrote it down. If you forgot to write the sneezing ability, it doesn't have it. Period.

This will help you build trust, and teach you to write good modules.


and also because it can lead to weird metagaming, for example one time I did this in the past the party noticed that there was a lake monster one of the cards and spent the entire session actively avoiding every body of water they came across.

Good for them! Avoiding water is the hallmark of an actual adventurer!

But, seriously, you don't show them the cards until their characters have reason to know that the creatures exist / are relevant. Which, with your group, might be a struggle - but hopefully a *better* one than your current struggles!

It's… a technique for "hinting". When you say, "there's rumors of werewolves", and hand them the werewolf stat card, they *know* that this is something that they're expected to be able to interact with. When an NPC talks about werewolves, but you don't hand them a card? It's just scenery. When you hand another player a text box about rumors of werewolves to read? It's a puzzle for them to think about.

You're helping them know what mode to play.


Also, speaking of the "sneeze ogre"; I didn't say I thought it was a "perfect riddle", I said that ideally the foreshadowing would have been obvious in retrospect in the same way that a good riddle was.

I got that. Sorry if I didn't communicate my understanding well.


Also, I strongly doubt the player in question even heard the flavor text as he tends to zone out during descriptions.

Good. That means that my "text box" plan should help him know when to focus. And, in a good group, help the other players know when to "pay attention for him", and poke him with sticks when his ignorance needs to be kept in check.


So, let me ask how you would handle two encounters in my last game that ended up being somewhat problematic, but not for the reasons you might think:

1: A giantess who is secretly a were-snake. She attempts to fight the players in her normal form, but once it is obvious they are too strong for her, she gives in to the beast and transforms. In essence, it is a classic two phase boss fight.

2: A group of hobgoblin sailors who are training in front of a complex that the PCs need to enter. They are standard hobgoblins, albeit of a bit higher level than most. They are described as "A squad of hobgoblin sailors, drilling with such discipline and precision their skill puts the navy of Meridia to shame. Still, it is obvious their morale hangs by a thread; their long exile has left them exhausted and it is obvious that they no longer have even a glimmer of genuine belief in their cause."

There is a large tiki mask overhanging the courtyard. The players have already found several like it, and upon detecting scrying magic coming from them, have destroyed them. They don't know exactly what they do, but they allow the Hobgoblin's master (whom the PCs have come to kill) to look through them.

The hobgoblins do not start out aware of the PCs, and they can be ambushed or snuck past. If the PCs try and talk them into mutiny, they will point to the tiki mask and tell them that they are fools ito suggest treason under the very eyes of their master and point toward the tiki mask. If the mask is destroyed, or if their master is already dead, the hobgoblins can easily be talked into joining the PCs and aiding them in their cause.

I'm not sure what you're asking here. How who would handle that as whom when now? If I were a player, the GM, you? How to move forward from that, how to handle leading up to that? I'm quite lost as to what you're asking.

However, best guess as to the best answer I could give: running the game for your group, wanting to do #1:

The orcs guarding the base would have shields emblazoned with a serpent insignia. As the party gets closer to the center, they'll notice more serpentine art, and art made from the shedded skin of a giant serpent. I'd run this in a system like 3e, where RAW her HP were the sum of the giant HP and the snake HP, and where transformations can be triggered; ideally, I'd introduce the party to the concept of "triggered transformation" previously, with something trivial or even comedic, like goblin were-pufferfish. And, just in case the party had massive damage / SoL effects / etc, I'd have her have kept a journal about her transformations (so that the riddle of "what's with the snakes" / "so where was the snake" doesn't go unsolved).

-----

Sample adventure (to demonstrate use of white-box vs black-box, text boxes, etc - note that I use "session" and "chapter" interchangeably)

-----

Session 1

Rumor reaches the heroes that a fairytale sneeze Ogre has led a band of goblins and Ogres to <town>, blocking the trade road in. Hand them the generic Ogre and goblin stat cards. Their mission is to unlock the road *and* find out who sent them. Getting to town, the party encounters goblins. Once they're there, they learn via text box [that the bridge is guarded by the fairytale Ogre, and how the winds were his to command, making the town archers helpless. The Ogre threw the town champion off the bridge; the archers heard <weird noises> from down below before they fled.] They ask that the PCs return the town hero's body (optional quest). Have an NPC jab at the archers, saying that they didn't need the local priest's services, because they escaped without a scratch.

If they ask at the Temple, divinations will reveal cryptic responses: "the Ogres are loyal to their Queen, but not out of loyalty" (they are magically compelled; sufficiently powerful Dispel effects can make them open to Diplomacy), "Sneezy prefers the way of peace, and misses his 6 brothers" (optimal path for Diplomacy with fairytale Ogre, hint that he won't try to kill the party initially), "beware the serpent in sheep's clothing" (a reference to chapter 3).

The sneeze Ogre (guarding a bridge) tries to knock the party off the bridge. Down below, there are were-pufferfish goblins (hand them stat cards) (they'll desperately try to roll towards the small stream if damage causes them to transform). The session 1 "boss fight" is against several normal Ogres.

The goblins know nothing. Interrogating any of the Ogres, or reading their orders after they are slain, they were sent to secure the area, and await the arrival of The Agent to go get the McGuffin from the Temple of Doom for their Queen. The orders have a snake symbol as a signature. If asked about the Queen, read the text box from chapter 3. Add both sites to party's map / show them a map / whatever tech you use to have a visual "quest log". The orders should subtly hint that the McGuffin would be helpful against the Queen, and hopefully the party will go get it before attacking the Queen, but it's fine if they go straight to chapter 3.

Regardless of how things turn out, you hand them the entire session notes (module, chapter 1) at the end of the session. This shows your players that you were playing it honest, and where they could have gone for information.

(Note: my evil overlord mandated 5-year-old advisor substitute suggested alternate tactics of "throw the Ogre off the bridge" and coming in from below, sapping the bridge. "They didn't *need* the bridge, did they?" - sounds like an optimal time for that "things your character would know" intervention)

-----

Session 2

Villagers should warn, in text box, that [the Guardian of the Temple of Doom is believed to be invincible. <Brave heroes from the past> entered the temple, and never returned; Divinations said that they died to the Guardian. Rumor has it that only Bilbo Baggins of the Shire ever survived an encounter with the Guardian.] Make sure the players know that those heroes were much stronger (and more numerous) than they are. Put the Shire on their map.

Asking the priest for Divinations will reveal the following cryptic hints: "hatred cannot be defeated by violence" (less informative than what the party already knows, but confirmation); "give a man enough rope…" (bad hint that the Avatar of Hate can be bound); "later is better than sooner" (hints to lots, including not going straight to the Queen).

If the party heads out for the Queen, turn to chapter 3.

If the party waits for The Agent, they will meet him in/around/outside town.

The Agent is an extremely small Dragon (can be carried). And, secretly, a high-level Rogue. He is *not* magically controlled, and will respond well to Diplomacy (especially to not have hostilities, or join forces to get the McGuffin). He pretends to be very weak, glad of protection by large folk. He is also the toughest fight of the session. If they choose to fight him, hand out stat card.

If they travel to the Shire, they learn that Bilbo is dead. But his nephew Frodo, a book Bilbo wrote, or Speak with Dead on his corpse can reveal, via text box, that [Bilbo simply fled from the Guardian, who seemingly could not leave the temple]. The correct questions to the corpse could reveal that Bilbo was invisible, or even the existence and (last known) location of a Ring of Invisibility (it was in Frodo's possession; he didn't know it was magical, and sold it to Gandalf for magical beans. Gandalf is in town, and seemingly too stoned to notice the party taking the ring, our the fireworks in his cart, although if sufficiently pestered, he'll trade the ring for any other magic item that the party has).

On their way to the Temple of Doom, a traveler will warn of goblins (hand out stat card) and werewolves (no stat card to hand out - this is just a rumor) in the area.

Outside the Temple of Doom are a pair of Burning Hate (hands out stat cards) - ranged, flying, weak, and whatever puns of Pelor you can come up with (glow his favorite color, (mis)quote his dogma, etc). If The Agent is with the party, *and* they are utterly helpless against ranged flying units, this is the only time he'll volunteer to be useful (as he is immune to their attacks).

Inside the temple are a few encounters with various fodder - goblins and skeletons (hand out stat cards).

If the party does not have The Agent, and did not come straight here (went to the Shire first, waited for The Agent but he didn't join), then The Agent's corpse is in the room with the Avatar of Hate. The McGuffin, a shifting silver blob, is visible on the altar. The Avatar of Hate is just a guy, but, every time he would be killed, he splits like Hydra heads. He cannot leave the temple. The Avatar of Hate cannot be reasoned with, and, other than attacking The Agent first, will choose targets randomly among those visible.

(EDIT: my evil overlord mandated 5-year-old advisor substitute points out that, if the party waits at the Temple of Doom, they can follow The Agent in, letting him clear the smaller encounters. They'll also be (largely) cleared out if The Agent gets here first for any other reason (went to the Shire first, just let him leave the village, etc). He'll die to the Avatar of Hate under any circumstances where he fights him alone regardless).

If The Agent is alive when the McGuffin is recovered, he will suggest a game of chance to determine who gets to keep it. Curiously, he will honor the game even if he loses.

At the end of the session, hand out chapter 2 (note that The Agent is *not* detailed in chapter 2)

-----

Chapter 3

En route to the Queen, have a Sentient Potted Plant squirrel / invisible pixie / something deliver a warning (especially if the party didn't grab the McGuffin); something like, [the Queen is a giant from <place>. She has gathered lesser races to her, seeking to achieve aims unknown. My master went to confront her, and has not returned.]

The Queen is camped in an orc settlement. Hand out Orc, Orc Elite, Orc War Wizard, Orc Shaman stat cards. During these encounters, the party should note that the Orc Elite all have serpent insignia on their shields, and, as they get deeper in, there are shed giant snake skins being used as town decorations.

If they manage to ask anyone any questions (somehow still having The Agent with them, going a diplomatic route, grabbing sentries, talking while fighting, or capturing people in town), have text boxes prepared:

[The Queen is powerful, defeated our previous champion in 1-on1 combat for the right to rule us.]

[Since then, she has been very reclusive, rarely emerging from her cave.]

[Here moods are… volatile.]

[The serpent? It is her symbol.]

[The snake skins? Our orcs bring her food, and return with them.]

[Sometimes, as night falls, we hear her scream, and then… nothing. Those who investigate never return.]

The giantess is a were-serpent, mentally unstable, and, even if they come in peace and working with them is obviously to her benefit, she will eventually attack the party. Once she is reduced below X HP, she will lose control completely, and transform into giant serpent form.

Almost out of battery - hope this makes sense.

icefractal
2021-06-28, 01:53 PM
But, again, its not about sympathy or soothing injured people, its about recognizing that not everything is a conspiracy against you; I am pretty sure we both agree that the person who spilled acid should not run around shouting about how his co-workers engineered the accident to hurt him and then throwing acid in their faces as revenge, right?

Note how you never consider the severity of your co-worker's wounds, whether they need medical attention, etc. You've dismissed their injury as "discomfort", without actually evaluating it. Lalalala.
I'm not quite sure how this fits - I'd agree that if someone is seriously injured, getting them medical attention should take priority over whether it was their own fault. But, no amount of injury would justify striking back at innocent people in revenge for a non-existent conspiracy.

I've encountered people who have a very, very broad definition of "venting". Like, "I have had a really bad day, so I'm going to call you a piece of ****, threaten you, and harass you repeatedly, despite you not being the source of my bad day. And you're not allowed to be mad about it, because I'm suffering!"

And to be blunt? Those people suck. It's not saying "Lalalala" to refuse to be a punching bag for their stress relief.

Talakeal
2021-06-28, 02:49 PM
snip.

I got that. I just wanted to make it very clear that this wasn't some sort of "Quit picking on Talakeal, I didn't do nothing!" post. It is about everyone, including myself, having realistic expectations and understanding about what is happening.


snip.

Agreed.


Just wanted to check, in the spectrum of "railroad" to "sandbox", you do know that you're describing components of each, without really describing either, right?

So I'm really not sure what to make of your "two types of GMs" comment.

Its not really about railroad vs. sandbox, alteast not in the way you tend to use the term.

Its about DM's who try and micromanage every little thing. And while this does tend to result in railroading, it also has to do with a lot more; fudging dice, grudge monsters, domineering NPCs, illusionism scenario design, long ban lists, neurotic table behavior, etc. Like, I have had DM's who had seating arrangements and tell players how they can roll their dice or how to fill out their character sheets.

And not all of them are jerks about it, a lot of them try and kill you with kindness. But IMO the biggest way to kill a game is to realize that you don't have the option to fail.

The "killer DM" is a famous bogey-man of gaming circles, but in my experiance doesn't actually exist. The opposite side of the coin, the DM who will fudge anything and everything to save the PCs, is a much more common and much more insidious threat.


A… rule? There's not really scenarios where that would help.

Sure there is.

The rest of the group is not going to spend half the first session, let alone every session, trying to bribe, beg, and coerce your character into joining the party / going on the adventure. So if that is the character you have in mind, change it now before wasting everyone's time.

In short, if you want to play Bilbo, make sure the game starts in Rivendel rather than Bag-End, and if you want to play Wolverine make sure it is X-Men the Animated Series Wolverine rather than X-Men First Class.




I don't play many brave heroes anymore - most of my brave heroes are dead. Your players seemingly weren't playing your idea of brave heroes. Either your players are bad at role-playing, or they didn't make brave heroes to begin with, or they realized that risking life and limb unnecessarily was just plain foolish. Kinda that "Gamist vs Simulationist" quandary. If you, IRL, were a brave hero, and there was a treasure in the middle of a swimming pool of acid, would you jump in to get it, or would you reach for the pool skimmer to try to acquire it safety?

It sounds like you have very good Gamist testers of your rules, who realized that only an idiot would ever behave the way you wanted them to behave in that situation.

So, if you wanted a rule here, it should be, "Talakeal will not get upset when we reach for a better solution. Talakeal will not mandate that we play whatever version of 'brave heroes' lives in his head."

This rule will help your players to test your rules and trust that you will not shoot the messenger of their feedback. To look for good solutions to their problems - like, say, running away from the Avatar of Hate, rather than obstinately, desperately trying to find a way to kill it because they believe that Talakeal believes that that's what a brave hero would do: kill it, or die trying.

So, if you want a rule, it should be, "Talakeal will abandon the notion of 'brave heroes' until the rest the group's (and system's) problems have been worked out". Because this kind of sentiment just clouds the waters and erodes the group's trust.

My qualification for "brave" is "will go in the adventure".

Lots of people want to play action adventure games, but then bring a PC to the table who would never, ever, actually go on an adventure or get into combat.

Several times in my last game, the party got to the dungeon, but rather than exploring, simply decided to seal the entrance and forget about all the treasure and lore within, which means that not only was all the prep-time I put into the dungeon wasted, but so was the entire evening of gaming as we now don't have anything to do.

Also, you and I went through this same discussion several years ago when it first came up, which is when I said that a character must be both brave and cunning, one who lacks the former is an NPC, and someone who lacks the latter attribute is a corpse. I thought that was a good explanation, and so I kept it in my letter, but people again are misreading that as one thing and not the other.

The "system" problems only work because I was running a hex-crawl game in safe mode for new players. It wouldn't be an issue in a regular game.

On an RP level, it isn't about brave or cunning characters, its that in an RPG time and living conditions don't actually matter to the players and are an illusion. In real life if we saw someone who lived in an undecorated one room apartment, ate not but ramen and tap water, worked eight hours of overtime every night, only left the house to go the gym, had no friends, and spent every cent on buying bigger guns, we would assume he was a crazy loser who lives a sad miserable life, but in an RPG that is "optimal".

Likewise, in character, going back to town every every room of a dungeon crawl would be miserable, and it would be a horrible waste of time and money. It is also more dangerous, as in real life a single attack is more likely to be fatal and you are greatly increasing the number of combats you get into. Ditto for accidents and other mishaps.


If we have stricter requirements for clear communication than your group, then that's a *good* thing.

Yeah, but again, when they assume I am trying to trick them and twist their words based on nothing, and use me not tricking them as evidence of a meta-trick, I am not sure how much good clearer communication is really going to help.


Lastly, you have this habit of throwing up a questionably-related single-tree distractions without touching the forest of the conversation. Is this something you do consciously? Are you even aware that you do it?

Yes, I am aware. You can probably blame my father, as one of his favorite lawyer tricks is poisoning the well, throwing a whole bunch of hurtful statements that are irrelevant and often outright liesstatements in front of his main point, and then refusing to let people address any of them.

But its a lot more apparent online, especially with the multi quote format, because it would be such a pain to include a whole bunch of one line "Yeah." "Ok." "Good point." "I see where you are going." etc. in the midst of a big post like this.


How many decades have you had the same problems with your games? Haven't these problems, if anything, only gotten worse? Wouldn't it be fair to suggest that, if anything, you might be underreacting?

Oh dear lord no! Don't ever say that!

Remember how players have a blow up once every 5-6 sessions? It used to be multiple times each session.

In the past I have had: People take off their shoes and hit other people in the face with them. People grabbing other peoples books character sheets or phones and ripping them apart. People smacking people upside the head. People getting up from the table without a word, locking themselves in the bathroom and not coming out all night, people calling people liars to their face (including one anecdote where they said the entire group was lying to them for no reason over something trivial), people stealing dice or models, people blatantly cheating or refusing to mark something they didn't agree with on their character sheet, players stealing the DM's notes, people bursting into tears, people driving off and abandoning people counting on them for a ride, people threatening to stab other people or take them out back and beat them up, people threatening to hit their wife, her demanding a divorce, and then blaming me for ruining their marriage, broken windows, friendships ended, people killing other people's characters or stealing from the party, people showing up drunk or on drugs, people sexually harassing others, people making PCs who never join the party, nights where no gaming actually happens for IC or OC reasons, people kicking others out of the group, people pretending to cancel the game but not really because they don't want to uninvite someone and then continuing to lie to them about it for years, and all sorts of other stuff that would be a big deal but seems minor compared to the above.

I have made a ton of progress over the years.

The last group was literally the most drama free I have ever played with. But, near the end of the campaign, I noticed Bob and Brian starting to go back to their old ways, and the newer players starting to emulate them, and after noticing one of the (formerly) new players starting to emulate Bob's habit of telling new players one sided versions of year old grudges, I freaked out and thought that I was in some sort of cascade scenario where each generation corrupts the next.

I have no ran anything in two years. I am going to start again in the fall, and several recent events now have me absolutely terrified that everything is going backward and I will soon find myself back in a situation like the paragraph of horrors listed above.


snip.

So the purpose of my question about ability scores was trying to illustrate that there is a difference between natural outcomes of a game system and intent.

In my letter, I talk about specialty.

It is a very real phenomenon that I have noticed in most games that people get bored and frustrated when they don't have enough spotlight time or make a big enough impact.

I am trying to convey this in my letter; if you make a melee only character it is natural for you to be unable to attack flyers, if you make a glass-cannon, it is natural that you get taken out quickly, if you make a walking brick it is natural that you not have much active contribution. Likewise, level of specialization should be proportionate to the size of the party; if you want to maximize spotlight time in a four person party, you should try and specialize to the degree that you are the best choice to handle roughly 1/4 of the situations that are likely to come up.

I am absolutely not saying you should only play a character that I want you to play, or threatening or punishing you. I am just stating an observation; that over or under specializing in a group RPG often results in boredom and a feeling of inferiority.



snip.

Wow, that's a lot of text.

Thank you, I haven't fully read it all yet, but I think maybe I failed to get my point across.

I was merely asking, for those two encounters, what the stat cards would look like and when they would be presented, and the same with the "box test".

Also, all that foreshadowing is nice, but it won't solve anything. Players are a distractable lot with brain's like seives, it doesn't matter if I give them 3 clues or 30, they still won't catch the clue, let alone remember it when it matters. Even if I flat out break character to tell them something, odds are it will be forgotten or misinterpreted, often deliberately.


Nope. You are only allowed to run the monster as you wrote it down. If you forgot to write the sneezing ability, it doesn't have it. Period.

This will help you build trust, and teach you to write good modules.


There are still going to be math errors, and seeing them will still fuel player paranoia.

But, ignoring forgotten abilities will also cause further problems.

First, it can create ridiculous scenarios, both from a rules and world-building perspective. The legendary blacksmith not having crafting skills or the sea monster that can't swim for example.

Second, odds are I will not realize its missing. I am fairly absent minded, and reminded myself to check every card for every ability every time it comes up isn't likely to happen (and will slow the game down when I do) and if announce an ability and it isn't there, whether or not I catch it at the time or they catch it later.

KorvinStarmast
2021-06-28, 03:28 PM
This may be worthy of a new thread, but I have a follow up question
Recommendation: I suggest a new thread.

If you have a party where:
One guy has a high charisma and agility, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has a high dexterity and endurance, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has a high intelligence and perception, and average scores in the other six attributes.
One guy has an extreme strength and low scores in the other seven attributes.
And one guy has an above average score in all eight attributes.
The characters are irrelevant.
The stats are irrelevant.
Your players, and how they respond to your adventures, puzzles, stories, NPCs, and challenges are who and what is relevant based on your OP. Spotlight management is based on taking care of each of the PLAYERS, not the CHARACTERS.
Here's a pro tip from a DM for many years (me): some players don't want a lot of spot light time. Find out who they are and craft their moments with a bit more care. You sometimes have to evoke that from them.

Honestly, what you are trying to do here is asking a bunch of unqualified strangers on the internet to mediate a conflict between you and your players, without the players even being present and able to tell their side of the issues. You won't find the solution here; we don't have a magic button that changes your players into the type of players you want to have. This can only be solved by both parties being involved and finding a compromise.
I will take this one step further.

Talakeal
If you spent as much time and effort in talking to, and actively listening to, your players, and then making adjustments based on those honest exchanges of views, as you do arguing with strangers on the internet - all while raising yet another excuse for why things are bad - you'd (1) have fewer problems at the table and (2) thus have less of a need to fill page after page with your DM'ing woes and assorted dumpster fires.

Q: What is the best use of your time as a DM, once you have set up the framework of the campaign?
A: Player engagement.

Q: What is one of the least productive uses of your time as a DM?
A: Spending hours of your life complaining about your players to strangers on an internet forum, particularly when you ask for advice and, when it is offered, your reflex is to reject it and make excuses.

I remember well the sage advice from my parents and my teachers as I was growing up.

Use Your Time Wisely.

Even if we are in our thirties, our forties, or beyond that Use Your Time Wisely is still good advice.

Since you ignored my last response, I'll use my time wisely and not respond again unless I get a concise response from you to this post.

Best of luck.

GloatingSwine
2021-06-28, 03:36 PM
A… rule? There's not really scenarios where that would help.


I dunno, I think it's pretty fundamental.

Player characters in RPGs are Thing Doers. Part of the design of the character needs to be why they are Doing The Thing. It can include the idea that they do not want to Do The Thing, but the player needs to include a reason why they have to anyway.

The counterpoint to this is that GMs exist to provide Things to Do.

If the players avoid the Things that the GM has provided to Do, then the session is a wipe and everyone has to come back next week because the GM needs time to prepare something else now.

Talakeal
2021-06-28, 03:51 PM
Recommendation: I suggest a new thread.

The characters are irrelevant.
The stats are irrelevant.
Your players, and how they respond to your adventures, puzzles, stories, NPCs, and challenges are who and what is relevant based on your OP. Spotlight management is based on taking care of each of the PLAYERS, not the CHARACTERS.
Here's a pro tip from a DM for many years (me): some players don't want a lot of spot light time. Find out who they are and craft their moments with a bit more care. You sometimes have to evoke that from them.

I will take this one step further.

Talakeal
If you spent as much time and effort in talking to, and actively listening to, your players, and then making adjustments based on those honest exchanges of views, as you do arguing with strangers on the internet - all while raising yet another excuse for why things are bad - you'd (1) have fewer problems at the table and (2) thus have less of a need to fill page after page with your DM'ing woes and assorted dumpster fires.

Q: What is the best use of your time as a DM, once you have set up the framework of the campaign?
A: Player engagement.

Q: What is one of the least productive uses of your time as a DM?
A: Spending hours of your life complaining about your players to strangers on an internet forum, particularly when you ask for advice and, when it is offered, your reflex is to reject it and make excuses.

I remember well the sage advice from my parents and my teachers as I was growing up.

Use Your Time Wisely.

Even if we are in our thirties, our forties, or beyond that Use Your Time Wisely is still good advice.

Since you ignored my last response, I'll use my time wisely and not respond again unless I get a concise response from you to this post.

Best of luck.

You’re putting me in a tough spot here, simultaneously chiding me for wasting time time arguing with people on the internet, asking me to be concise, and saying that I ignored your previous post. I am not sure if I can do address all of that at the same time, but I will try.

I did not ignore your previous post. I read it and thought it was very good advice. I will likely take it to heart when I do have a conversation with my players about our issues. As I said above, I rarely find it necessary to post responses to things that I both understand and agree with lest I clutter up the thread with tons of one line posts, but will try and do better about acknowledging and appreciating such interactions.


Time spent with my players is a lot more valuable, and a lot more risky, than time on the internet. I have a job where I basically babysit a computer for ten hours a day, and have lots of free time to browse forums on my tablet. Likewise, if I get into an argument with someone online, the worst that can happen is a mod warning or being blocked, while irl arguments can ruin games or entire relationships.


For example, I had a conversation with Bob recently about his expectations for the game, its where I got such nuggets are “armor does nothing” and “grappling is cheating”. But I know him, and I know that if I actually tried to argue these points he would get mad, go to his room, lock the door, and not answer my calls for the next week.

I have some more to say, but I will stop here for the sake of being concise.

I am curious though, could you please elaborate on what exactly player engagements means in the context of the best use of one’s time?

NichG
2021-06-28, 04:03 PM
I dunno, I think it's pretty fundamental.

Player characters in RPGs are Thing Doers. Part of the design of the character needs to be why they are Doing The Thing. It can include the idea that they do not want to Do The Thing, but the player needs to include a reason why they have to anyway.

The counterpoint to this is that GMs exist to provide Things to Do.

If the players avoid the Things that the GM has provided to Do, then the session is a wipe and everyone has to come back next week because the GM needs time to prepare something else now.

Of course you can flip this and say that the rule must be that the GM provides things that the player characters will want to do, and if the players say their characters do not want to Do the Thing then it means the GM has broken a rule. But I think the point is that stating it as a rule is sort of like making a rule 'you will enjoy this game'. Just declaring it isn't enough to make it real, and if it has to be faked then there's a problem that should be addressed.

I'd say there's room for a lot of subtle differences in exactly how such a thing could be phrased, and a bad phrasing can be really bad. To the extent that I have something like this in my campaigns, it's always something very specific like: "This campaign is about the characters agreeing to join a spy agency. Please make a character who would be willing to do so given the following pitch, or has already joined." But note that in that, there's no requirement that players make characters who will agree to do every mission assigned them, or will always complete their missions, or whatever. The rule is there for the setup, but once events start happening, if one of the PCs decides 'this spy agency goes against my ethos, I'm going to be a double agent and sabotage it' or 'I'm corrupt and I'm going to take advantages of the missions to advance my own plots' or whatever, its fine.

So I'd say an unconditional rule is unreasonable - once the GM is presenting situations and asking for characters to react to those situations and develop their own opinions and make consequential decisions, then a decision of 'this seems too dangerous' or 'this seems like we're just going to help the villain win' or even 'our characters might do this, but this seems like a slog to me OOC and I don't want to play this out' or whatever should reasonably also be on the table for the players. But a conditional thing - 'what's going on isn't well suited for all possible characters, and I'm letting you know ahead of time so that you bring a character with whom you're more likely to actually enjoy the game' - is reasonable.

Better than making things into rules is to provide information, make requests, and explain natural consequences.

Provide information - give details about what the campaign will be about, and have players give each-other details about what their ideas for characters are.

Make requests - A GM can say 'I don't have good ideas in this campaign for forcing you guys to stick together, so could you please make characters who already have reasons to do so?' or 'I have a lot of ideas for a campaign about heists and the criminal underworld, if you're on board for that could you make appropriate characters?' or 'I'd like us to focus more on the doing of things than negotiating about whether things will get done, could we figure out how to do that as a group?'

Explain natural consequences - "This campaign is mostly undead, so rogues are going to struggle with combat unless they have something other than sneak attack and crits to lean on." or "This is going to be a very morally gray campaign with a lot of situations in which there isn't a clear correct thing to do. Some of the Good-aligned deities might not be allies depending on how the party goes, so clerics and paladins of specific deities rather than abstract concepts might find themselves in opposition with the source of their powers" or "Ultimately, this is a sandbox and without the PCs having a strong motivation we'll just sit at the table being awkwardly silent, and the campaign won't get off the ground." Note that this isn't about punishments or applied consequences or penalties.

KorvinStarmast
2021-06-28, 04:30 PM
I am curious though, could you please elaborate on what exactly player engagements means in the context of the best use of one’s time? Talking to and actively listening to your players.
I am honestly puzzled that you ask me what player engagement means if you've been DMing for twenty years. Maybe I am calling something you are familiar with by a different name. It happens. Popular terms do change over time.

Also, if anything I posted previously was useful, Great! :smallbiggrin:

Best of luck.

GloatingSwine
2021-06-28, 04:35 PM
Of course you can flip this and say that the rule must be that the GM provides things that the player characters will want to do, and if the players say their characters do not want to Do the Thing then it means the GM has broken a rule. But I think the point is that stating it as a rule is sort of like making a rule 'you will enjoy this game'. Just declaring it isn't enough to make it real, and if it has to be faked then there's a problem that should be addressed.


Actually, that should be one of the rules.

Not "you will enjoy this game", but "We will enjoy this game". Because if you go into the game with a positive mentality and desire to enjoy it and help others to do so, chances are you will because you will act in a way that will enhance connection with and enjoyment of the game for yourself and the rest of the table.

(The GM should provide things that the players want to do, the players provide reasons why their characters are going to do them).

NichG
2021-06-28, 05:07 PM
Actually, that should be one of the rules.

Not "you will enjoy this game", but "We will enjoy this game". Because if you go into the game with a positive mentality and desire to enjoy it and help others to do so, chances are you will because you will act in a way that will enhance connection with and enjoyment of the game for yourself and the rest of the table.

(The GM should provide things that the players want to do, the players provide reasons why their characters are going to do them).

My problem with specifying it as a rule is, what exactly do you do when the rule gets broken?

If a player is not enjoying the game, saying 'no, the rule says you have to enjoy it, stop not having fun' would be pretty useless, and is likely going to make things worse.

Now, a rule that if something seems like it won't be fun you should think twice and see if you could find a way to enjoy it before complaining or giving up, that'd be at least sort of okay as a rule. Because if you remind someone of that rule, they can then do what the rule says, and if they're still unhappy then its not like the rule tries to deny that at a fundamental level.

A rule that says 'us all enjoying the game is the most important thing' would likewise be fine.

Talakeal
2021-06-28, 05:27 PM
@NichG and Gloating Swine:

I agree with most everything you have said in your last couple of posts.


My problem with specifying it as a rule is, what exactly do you do when the rule gets broken?

If a player is not enjoying the game, saying 'no, the rule says you have to enjoy it, stop not having fun' would be pretty useless, and is likely going to make things worse.

Now, a rule that if something seems like it won't be fun you should think twice and see if you could find a way to enjoy it before complaining or giving up, that'd be at least sort of okay as a rule. Because if you remind someone of that rule, they can then do what the rule says, and if they're still unhappy then its not like the rule tries to deny that at a fundamental level.

A rule that says 'us all enjoying the game is the most important thing' would likewise be fine.

Its less a rule, and more like something that I always let my PCs know before the game.

Like: "My game's premise is XYZ, please make characters who have the appropriate morality, motivation, and skills to engage with that premise alongside the rest of the group. If you have OOC issues with that premise, talk to me before the game to see what we can do."



Actually, that should be one of the rules.

Not "you will enjoy this game", but "We will enjoy this game". Because if you go into the game with a positive mentality and desire to enjoy it and help others to do so, chances are you will because you will act in a way that will enhance connection with and enjoyment of the game for yourself and the rest of the table.

(The GM should provide things that the players want to do, the players provide reasons why their characters are going to do them).

Exactly this.

Also, see my conversation about bravery with Quertus above.

My players constantly come to me wanting action and adventure games, but then have character's who are too cautious and grounded to actually get into fights or explore the unknown, which means no game. I would be perfectly happy with slice of life harem comedy games if my players were upfront about it, but they always want lots of hack and slash.


Talking to and actively listening to your players.
I am honestly puzzled that you ask me what player engagement means if you've been DMing for twenty years. Maybe I am calling something you are familiar with by a different name. It happens. Popular terms do change over time.

Also, if anything I posted previously was useful, Great! :smallbiggrin:

Best of luck.

Its just that normally when I hear engagement, it is in regards to how much the level at which the players interact with / are immersed in the game. Like, for example, MMOs use player engagement as a metric to see what aspects of the game are popular and break it down by how much time the players spend doing any given activity. Not something I can directly improve by spending more time on my end.

You, and apologies if I am mistaken, appear to be going from the opposite direction, that I should be engaging more with my players. Which is very good advice, but a heck of a lot easier said than done.

Any specific advice you can give on that front would be appreciated.

Quertus
2021-06-29, 12:31 PM
My qualification for "brave" is "will go in the adventure".

Talakeal, every time you try to define "brave" as "will go on the adventure", every time you try to define "agency" as "it's your fault", every time you try to place blame on your players definitionally, that's what I call "totally out of line". Probably the wrong words for it. I probably mean some other branch of suboptimal behavior. But, whatever it should be named, I must emphasize, *don't do that*.

Yes, there are ways that creating a culture of "Agency" will naturally lead to accepting certain types of responsibility; yes, brave heroes will statistically be more suitable to certain classes of adventure; yes, these can be good tools.

But you're jabbing the screwdriver through someone's eye, and thinking that that should be sufficient to build the house.

There's more to building a culture than stating a rule and throwing blame at others. Others have tried more subtle versions of this idea, often involving words and phrases like "conversation", "talk with your players" and "listen". But, to be blunt, anytime you adopt whatever mood / mode / thought process / whatever that encourages you to write such things, it's not doing what you want, it's only adding to the toxicity of the group.

If you want, we can try to workshop the difference between assigning blame, and working together to solve a problem. Or putting the cart before the horse, and trying to assign culture-specific responsibility before actually creating that culture at the table vs actually creating a table culture.


I was merely asking, for those two encounters, what the stat cards would look like and when they would be presented, and the same with the "box test".

I think I gave examples of boxed text / text boxes in my previous post (everything in "[]”). As you would say, it's not Shakespeare, but it should demonstrate the concept of, "everything necessary to understand any black-box encounters".


Also, all that foreshadowing is nice, but it won't solve anything. Players are a distractable lot with brain's like seives, it doesn't matter if I give them 3 clues or 30, they still won't catch the clue, let alone remember it when it matters. Even if I flat out break character to tell them something, odds are it will be forgotten or misinterpreted, often deliberately.

That's… part of the intended point of these tests.

But I'm an idiot. One thing i haven't discussed is not just giving *us* feedback, but workshopping the encounters with your players. Anything they didn't get, you explicitly ask them, "How would *you* get across <hand them the module>?"

You're getting them to play test, to help you write modules for your system.


There are still going to be math errors, and seeing them will still fuel player paranoia.

But, ignoring forgotten abilities will also cause further problems.


First, it can create ridiculous scenarios, both from a rules and world-building perspective. The legendary blacksmith not having crafting skills or the sea monster that can't swim for example.

Tell them this up front: "I am trying out a new system. I am likely to miss things. Any time someone finds something missing from these stat cards, they will be awarded a beanie.". Or possibly, "the party will be awarded a beanie", or even "everyone in the party will be awarded a beanie".

Point is, get their buy-in that you are human, and *reward* them for helping you with this. (EDIT: and this is an incentive for you to make as many encounters as possible white-box, so that you have the group error-checking all your content *before* you use it.)

(Note: not that you will likely understand my pseudocode below, but, reading through them, I've found 2 3 missing bits already. It happens. I have fixed the less obvious one; the other 2 are completely missing entries.)


Second, odds are I will not realize its missing. I am fairly absent minded, and reminded myself to check every card for every ability every time it comes up isn't likely to happen (and will slow the game down when I do) and if announce an ability and it isn't there, whether or not I catch it at the time or they catch it later.

In 3e parlance, how do you know the DC of the saving throw for the ability if you aren't looking at the Monster stat sheet? This conversation makes you sound like the cheater your players claim you are.

So, to clarify: the stat sheet should have whatever stats the system uses, and every single button that the monster can push (possible exceptions can be made for generic "everyman" buttons, like "talk" or "move under own power", but those must be listed in your system). Any exceptions to everyman powers, and any passive abilities, must also be listed. For example,

Sneezy - Magic Fey Ogre
Physical 5, Mental 3, Social 3, Magical 5
Health 29
Big'ol: Sneezy gets +4 in Physical contests were size does matter, and -2 Physical defense to avoid attacks.
Sneeze: Sneezy can control the winds, making himself immune to most projectiles per Wind Wall, with the limitation that Sneezy must be aware of the attack in order to benefit from this immunity. This use of the ability is a [free reaction]. Further, Sneezy can use Magic in place of Physical to attempt any standard Grapple technique at range, and affecting creatures subject to [Wind]. This requires LoS and LoE, but otherwise ignores [cover]. This is a [magic][fey][air][wind] ability.

The Agent - Fire Dragon
Physical 4, Mental 4, Social 4, Magical 2
Health 69
Tiny: The Agent gets -2 Physical in contests where size does matter, and +1 physical defense to avoid attacks.
Flying
Fire: immune to fire, -4 to soak Cold damage (covered by [Fire] subtype)
Breath: able to use Magic to attack at range; this is a [Magic][Fire][Recharge 3][area 0] ability.
Dragon hide: The Agent gets +4 Physical defense and +1 Magic defense to soak damage.
Rogue: The Agent had training as a Rogue 9.

Improved Evasion: The Agent can roll Physical to avoid any Area effect, and automatically scales it down to "Lesser Effect" even if this roll fails.
Etc
Hostage: On a successful Physical attack, The Agent can wrap their tail around a creature's neck, and take cover behind them. All attacks from "the other side" have a 50% chance to hit the hostage instead. If The Agent so chooses, they can also attempt a 1-damage [strangulation] attack each round they maintain the Hostage (no attack roll necessary) (with normal [strangulating] rules for suffocation). This is a [grapple][cover] effect.
Pathetic: The Agent gets +2 Social to convince anyone that he cannot do / could not have done something, and -2 to Social to convince anyone that he can / could / did do something.

Goblin were-pufferfish - goblin humanoid lycanthrope aquatic comedic
Physical 1, Mental 1, Social 2, Magic 1
Health 4+9
Lycanthrope

Silver: +8 Physical to soak damage unless [Silver]
Moon-cursed: chance to transform and "lose control" at night (see table). Even if passes roll, cannot voluntarily transform back during 3 nights of full moon.
Beast Within: chance to transform and lose control on damage (see table); automatic once damage passes threshold of "only animal health left" (9 pufferfish animal health)
Alternate Form - pufferfish:

aquatic - full move in water; air suffocation; physical @-4 vs ground DC to move 1 square on land.


The Queen - giant lycanthrope
Physical 8, Mental 4, Social 2, Magic 1
Health 40+30
Lycanthrope

Silver: +8 Physical to soak damage unless [Silver]
Moon-cursed: chance to transform and "lose control" at night (see table). Even if passes roll, cannot voluntarily transform back during 3 nights of full moon.
Beast Within: chance to transform and lose control on damage (see table); automatic once damage passes threshold of "only animal health left" (30 serpent animal health)
Alternate Form - serpent:

Natural Weapon: bite
Poison: successful bite damage causes (see table). This is a [poison][P. Injected][P. Organic] effect.
Coils: The Queen may only grapple by coiling. While coiling, The Queen may bite, but may not move. This is a [grapple] effect.
Serpent hide: The Queen gets +2 Physical defense to soak damage.
Ow, that stings: once per fight, The Queen may verbally declare, "ow, that stings". If she does so, she negates all effects from an attack, and instead a) loses 5 health (this triggers transformation as normal); b) suffers a -3 to all Physical for the remainder of the encounter. This ability may only be used in Giant form, and may only be used on attacks which would prevent her from becoming a serpent (taken below 0 health, paralyzed, etc). This is a [verbal][Narrative] power.

If things go badly enough, you have *another player* run all the monsters for you, until you learn how to write stat cards (and tactics) well enough to remove claims of "cheating". Which is part of the point. So don't cheat - just run the cards as you wrote them, otherwise it defeats the purpose.

Feel free to have us read through / edit those, as well.

kyoryu
2021-06-29, 12:51 PM
I don't really like the idea of handing out NPC stat cards simply because it punishes players who invested in lore, reconnaissance, and analytical skills. I am also concerned that it will exacerbate the problem when the players notice an inevitable mistake (can you imagine the poop-show if I had forgotten to mark down the fomorians sneeze ability?) and also because it can lead to weird metagaming, for example one time I did this in the past the party noticed that there was a lake monster one of the cards and spent the entire session actively avoiding every body of water they came across.

Okay, and yet some of the problems you're seeing come from not giving out enough information. Which of these is more important to you? Solving those issues (especially the trust bits), or rewarding people for info skills?


Also, speaking of the "sneeze ogre"; I didn't say I thought it was a "perfect riddle", I said that ideally the foreshadowing would have been obvious in retrospect in the same way that a good riddle was. Also, I strongly doubt the player in question even heard the flavor text as he tends to zone out during descriptions.

So, what I'm hearing is that your goal for information giving is to give little enough information that the players cannot figure out the actual information, yet enough information that, in retrospect, they think they should have figured it out.

This is an incredibly slim target to hit, and frustrating. There seems to be a lot of desire to have players discover stuff only by having it used against them, and make "figuring out" the monster the key bit - IOW, fighting monster w/o information = no chance of success, fighting monster w/ information = easy success.

I'd personally change that up a bit. I'd design monsters that are still challenging and interesting encounters even if you know their deal (aka have the full stat block). I'd also look at an information disclosure goal of "they can probably figure it out based on the info, and if they don't, in retrospect they'll know they should have."

Even if you don't go with full stat disclosure, I really think you'd be well served, given the trust issues you seem to be having, by upping the amount of info you give.

icefractal
2021-06-29, 01:33 PM
Always back to the sneeze ogre. :smallannoyed:

I think the reason it annoys me is that the advice against "foes with any ability that isn't extremely choreographed" isn't presented as "a special case for dealing with this particular dysfunctional group", but like it was true in general.

And I can't agree with that. Enemies without big tells, or without tells at all are totally valid. A Psion who wears leather armor and carries two shortswords, so at first glance you'd assume Ranger or Rogue or something - totally valid. They don't have to wear like, robes with "#1 mind melter" written on them and a huge crystal on their hat. Yes, this makes the fight a bit tougher than if it was obvious - which is just something to factor in to any difficulty estimation, not an inherently bad thing.

From a realism perspective - not all information is obvious at first glance.
From a challenge/gamist perspective - working with incomplete information is part of the challenge.
From a narrative perspective - it's no inherently better or worse than an obvious foe, just depends on their role in the story.
From a beer-n-pretzels perspective - doesn't matter if the PCs get fooled, because it's not like they had a plan or detailed tactics anyway.

But yet it seems to be taken as a given that this is bad for some reason. [/rant]

kyoryu
2021-06-29, 02:02 PM
Always back to the sneeze ogre. :smallannoyed:

I think the reason it annoys me is that the advice against "foes with any ability that isn't extremely choreographed" isn't presented as "a special case for dealing with this particular dysfunctional group", but like it was true in general.

And I can't agree with that. Enemies without big tells, or without tells at all are totally valid. A Psion who wears leather armor and carries two shortswords, so at first glance you'd assume Ranger or Rogue or something - totally valid. They don't have to wear like, robes with "#1 mind melter" written on them and a huge crystal on their hat. Yes, this makes the fight a bit tougher than if it was obvious - which is just something to factor in to any difficulty estimation, not an inherently bad thing.

From a realism perspective - not all information is obvious at first glance.
From a challenge/gamist perspective - working with incomplete information is part of the challenge.
From a narrative perspective - it's no inherently better or worse than an obvious foe, just depends on their role in the story.
From a beer-n-pretzels perspective - doesn't matter if the PCs get fooled, because it's not like they had a plan or detailed tactics anyway.

But yet it seems to be taken as a given that this is bad for some reason. [/rant]

So it depends on the foe, right?

Like the more the un-telegraphed ability has the chance of one-shotting (either death or removal from the fight) the characters, the more it needs to be telegraphed. The more against type something is? The more it needs to be telegraphed.

With the Snogre, it sounded like his sneeze ability was really good for knocking people out of the fight and down the gorge. That's basically a one-shot, and so needs stronger telegraphs.

Someone doing fire damage instead of regular damage? Not so much.

The thing to me is that giving more information on a fight is pretty much never an error - with well designed foes, it's still a fun encounter, and so there's no loss, while being stingy with information can easily be interpreted as cheating, going for 'gotcha' moments, being an adversarial GM, and making things unfun in other ways. That's not saying everything needs to be wide open throttle on information deluge, but that it's an area where "too much" is usually better than "too little".

Talakeal
2021-06-29, 02:24 PM
Okay, and yet some of the problems you're seeing come from not giving out enough information. Which of these is more important to you? Solving those issues (especially the trust bits), or rewarding people for info skills?

Serious question; is that actually an issue for my group or just something the forum has glommed onto?

In my entire previous campaign, there was precisely one time, when precisely one player, said precisely one sentence about how he felt that I made up an ability on the spot.

This has resulted in thousands of forum posts debating gotchas and foreshadowing and lack of information, but looking back I am not sure if I can think of any actual issues in my game that would have been averted if I had come out before hand and given the players full exposition about what was about to happen.

Heck, in my experience flat out telling the players a piece of information is more likely to cause issues, because they inevitably either forget it or willfully misinterpret it because they think I am trying to trick them, but I expect them to actually have the information.*

Now, telling the players how to solve a problem probably would have avoided some issues, but that's a whole other kettle of fish.


So, what I'm hearing is that your goal for information giving is to give little enough information that the players cannot figure out the actual information, yet enough information that, in retrospect, they think they should have figured it out.

This is an incredibly slim target to hit, and frustrating. There seems to be a lot of desire to have players discover stuff only by having it used against them, and make "figuring out" the monster the key bit - IOW, fighting monster w/o information = no chance of success, fighting monster w/ information = easy success.

I'd personally change that up a bit. I'd design monsters that are still challenging and interesting encounters even if you know their deal (aka have the full stat block). I'd also look at an information disclosure goal of "they can probably figure it out based on the info, and if they don't, in retrospect they'll know they should have."

Even if you don't go with full stat disclosure, I really think you'd be well served, given the trust issues you seem to be having, by upping the amount of info you give.

Again, this only applies to surprise reveals or twists, which is maybe 1% of encounters, and doesn't really affect the difficulty in any way.

Good foreshadowing is obvious in retrospect, but it shouldn't actually be necessary information.

For example, say that the D&D troll is an original monster I have just invented. I am not going to give some vague clues about its regeneration and fire weakness, assume the PCs will get it, and then throw them into an arena fight with 3 trolls even if the CR guidelines say it is a fair encounter. Instead I will do some foreshadowing, and then give them an atmospheric learning encounter in a safe environment, say with a single troll in an area which it is easy to escape from, with plenty of obstacles to hide behind or trap the troll in, and maybe even some convenient flammable oil sitting nearby so they can learn about the troll's abilities in a relatively safe environment, but still actually be playing the game rather than just memorizing a lecture from me.


*: You know, one of the problems of lack of trust is that it is hard to phrase things. If I say something as simple as "Bears live in the woods;" my players would, if they ever encountered a bear outside of the woods, call me a liar and a cheat, but if I said "Bears typically live in the woods," they would assume I am trying to trick them and come to expect bears everywhere but the forest. Not sure if that is an issue that can be solved by more information or more precise communication.



Talakeal, every time you try to define "brave" as "will go on the adventure", every time you try to define "agency" as "it's your fault", every time you try to place blame on your players definitionally, that's what I call "totally out of line". Probably the wrong words for it. I probably mean some other branch of suboptimal behavior. But, whatever it should be named, I must emphasize, *don't do that*.

Yes, there are ways that creating a culture of "Agency" will naturally lead to accepting certain types of responsibility; yes, brave heroes will statistically be more suitable to certain classes of adventure; yes, these can be good tools.

But you're jabbing the screwdriver through someone's eye, and thinking that that should be sufficient to build the house.

Note sure if you are playing Devil's advocate again or not, but let me state again that this is precisely the opposite of the message that I am trying to convey.

My players want to see everything in terms of fault and blame, and when something happens they don't like they will immediately jump on either the GM (and its not necessarily me, they do this with everyone) or a fellow player (who will then likely get defensive and try and shift the blame, usually back at the person who raised the stink**.

But it is not about fault.
It is not about blame.
It is not about punishment.
It is not about threats.
It is not about right or wrong.

It is about choosing the character you want to play, and the game, both the rules and the setting, enabling that character's attributes, both positive and negative, to matter.

There are no good or bad characters, only temporary situations which are easier for some characters and harder for others.
And (unless another PC is stepping on your toes) over the course of the campaign all of these situations will more or less even out.

Strengths should matter. If you want to play a smart guy, you will excel at lore and puzzles. If you want to play a strong guy, you will excel at feats of strength. If you want to play a rogue, you will excel at breaking into buildings. If you want to play a doctor, you will excel at saving people's lives. If you want to play a swordsman, you will excel at melee combat. If you want to play a guy who is immune to fire, you will excel when fighting red dragons.

Likewise, weaknesses should matter. If you want to play a clumsy guy, you will struggle at acrobatics. If you want to play a weak guy, you will struggle when grappled. If you want to play a frail guy, you will be susceptible to poison and disease, if you want to play a dumb guy you will struggle with puzzles, if you want to play a guy who is weak to cold you will struggle when fighting white dragons, if you want to play a melee specialist you will struggle against flyers.


**: Which, if I had to guess, is where the "You kill our characters and then get mad at us is being dead," is coming from; they fail at something, start ranting about how it is all my fault, and when I get defensive and explain that their choices also had a part in the outcome, they re-frame the situation in their mind as me being mad at them for failing rather than being mad at them for blowing up at me.


In 3e parlance, how do you know the DC of the saving throw for the ability if you aren't looking at the Monster stat sheet? This conversation makes you sound like the cheater your players claim you are.

In 3E I would look at the monster manual. In my system I would calculate it before the session and write it on my notes. If I make a mistake, I would cross it out and write the correct value in when I notice the mistake (and this is the part that if I handed the card over to my players would look, to them, indistinguishable from changing things on the fly).

But note that for most things I don't really need a stat card; I know that a dragon can fly and breathe fire, or that a lake monster can swim and breathe underwater, or that an undead creature is immune to poison but weak to holy damage. And that is the kind of stuff that I will likely forget to write down (and which will create logical issues, both rules wise and mechanics wise, "What do you mean this skeleton is immune to poison? Why wasn't the last one?" "Um, because I forgot to write it down..."


With the Snogre, it sounded like his sneeze ability was really good for knocking people out of the fight and down the gorge. That's basically a one-shot, and so needs stronger telegraphs.

Eh, it was basically a significantly less effective version of what he could do with his bare hands that would function at range.

In this particular case though, it just served as a one time dispel.

The fire mage has a buff which turns him into living fire, making him immune to heat and physical damage and vulnerable to cold damage, and which lasts until he is "put out" by an attack which deals wind or water damage or if he is in an oxygen free environment.

He had this buff up going into the fight, the rest of the party was grappled and tossed into the gorge one by one, the sorcerer assumed his buff would allow him to solo the fomorian, it sneezed on him and blew him out, he jumped into the gorge after his comrades, told me he thought I added the sneeze at the last moment to railroad him into the pit to avoid splitting the party. They climbed out of the pit, killed the fomorian, and we enjoyed the rest of the session without issue.

I then created a thread asking if introducing a fight where the likely outcome was being moved someplace against your will counted as railroading, and we have gone into a two year tangeant about gotchas and foreshadowing monster abilities.

icefractal
2021-06-29, 02:59 PM
Like the more the un-telegraphed ability has the chance of one-shotting (either death or removal from the fight) the characters, the more it needs to be telegraphedI'm curious though - what would you expect the result of telegraphing that a foe has a SoD/SoS ability to be? Maybe in a few cases, the characters have the right protection available, just haven't cast it yet, but in the majority? Knowing that the Beholder has a Finger of Death eyebeam doesn't really let you prevent that, other than "everyone without a high Fort save run away or hide", I guess. And if removal from the fight is considered just as bad for this purpose, running away isn't an option either.

"Foes shouldn't even have SoD / SoS abilities" is a perspective I understand, if not necessarily agree with, but that's orthogonal to how obvious said abilities are.

Talakeal
2021-06-29, 03:07 PM
I'm curious though - what would you expect the result of telegraphing that a foe has a SoD/SoS ability to be? Maybe in a few cases, the characters have the right protection available, just haven't cast it yet, but in the majority? Knowing that the Beholder has a Finger of Death eyebeam doesn't really let you prevent that, other than "everyone without a high Fort save run away or hide", I guess. And if removal from the fight is considered just as bad for this purpose, running away isn't an option either.

"Foes shouldn't even have SoD / SoS abilities" is a perspective I understand, if not necessarily agree with, but that's orthogonal to how obvious said abilities are.

I still have yet to figure put how this philosophy would fare against a book standard spell-caster. The PHB alone gives any full caster dozens of ways to take people out of the fight by mid level.

kyoryu
2021-06-29, 03:10 PM
I'm curious though - what would you expect the result of telegraphing that a foe has a SoD/SoS ability to be? Maybe in a few cases, the characters have the right protection available, just haven't cast it yet, but in the majority? Knowing that the Beholder has a Finger of Death eyebeam doesn't really let you prevent that, other than "everyone without a high Fort save run away or hide", I guess. And if removal from the fight is considered just as bad for this purpose, running away isn't an option either.

"Foes shouldn't even have SoD / SoS abilities" is a perspective I understand, if not necessarily agree with, but that's orthogonal to how obvious said abilities are.

In general, I think SoD or SoS abilities should be avoidable, not just mathed out. So, like if you know there's a medusa, you can avoid its gaze. Against a beholder, you should be able to take appropriate cover or whatever. Being removed from a fight should be the result of bad decisionmaking.

So the interesting thing with those abilities is how they restrict your ability to do everything, and force you to change your tactics to compensate. That's pretty interesting. But for that to work, you have to know what the ability is and how to avoid it - otherwise you're not making decisions any more, you're just getting mathed out of the fight.

Now, I'm not a huuuuuge fan of SoD/SoS in general, but I think if you're going to have them, that's how you run them.

BRC
2021-06-29, 03:24 PM
Note sure if you are playing Devil's advocate again or not, but let me state again that this is precisely the opposite of the message that I am trying to convey.

My players want to see everything in terms of fault and blame, and when something happens they don't like they will immediately jump on either the GM (and its not necessarily me, they do this with everyone) or a fellow player (who will then likely get defensive and try and shift the blame, usually back at the person who raised the stink**.

But it is not about fault.
It is not about blame.
It is not about punishment.
It is not about threats.
It is not about right or wrong.

It is about choosing the character you want to play, and the game, both the rules and the setting, enabling that character's attributes, both positive and negative, to matter.

There are no good or bad characters, only temporary situations which are easier for some characters and harder for others.
And (unless another PC is stepping on your toes) over the course of the campaign all of these situations will more or less even out.

Strengths should matter. If you want to play a smart guy, you will excel at lore and puzzles. If you want to play a strong guy, you will excel at feats of strength. If you want to play a rogue, you will excel at breaking into buildings. If you want to play a doctor, you will excel at saving people's lives. If you want to play a swordsman, you will excel at melee combat. If you want to play a guy who is immune to fire, you will excel when fighting red dragons.

Likewise, weaknesses should matter. If you want to play a clumsy guy, you will struggle at acrobatics. If you want to play a weak guy, you will struggle when grappled. If you want to play a frail guy, you will be susceptible to poison and disease, if you want to play a dumb guy you will struggle with puzzles, if you want to play a guy who is weak to cold you will struggle when fighting white dragons, if you want to play a melee specialist you will struggle against flyers.


**: Which, if I had to guess, is where the "You kill our characters and then get mad at us is being dead," is coming from; they fail at something, start ranting about how it is all my fault, and when I get defensive and explain that their choices also had a part in the outcome, they re-frame the situation in their mind as me being mad at them for failing rather than being mad at them for blowing up at me.


First of all, even the best players can get like this, but it usually passes.

It's really hard to admit "My character failed because of the combination of decisions I made and the luck of the dice".

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if this might come down to a communication style.

Like, imagine a PC with poor dexterity tries to balance their way across a narrow beam. They fail, fall, get caught by guards.

The Player will be immediately thinking back to every decision that led to them crossing the beam, what information they had. They know their character is bad at Dex, so, obviously, they feel like they must had had no choice but to cross the beam.

They're going to be emotional, upset, and the exact worst thing to do in such a situation is to start pointing out what they could have done better. They're going to be looking for something to blame (The safest answer is usually "The Dice", but that's not as satisfying), and pointing the blame back at them doesn't help. "You have good disguise, maybe you should have tried to disguise yourself as a guard, rather than going the Thief route". That may have worked, but that's either an idea they had or discarded, or it's one they didn't think of. Either way, if doesn't help them right now to hear about what they could have done. They're not going to suddenly stop and be like "Oh yeah, I was being REALLY dumb there. Huh, Guess I deserved it. I'm gonna go buy everybody snacks while you work out a way to rescue my character from jail!"


This is going to be especially relevant the more "Absolute" abilities you have. Absolute abilities are anything that can trivialize an encounter unless specifically blocked.

That "Living Fire Form" ability you mentioned is a great example. Immune to physical damage, but gets dispelled by water and wind. It's capable of rendering plenty of encounters (anybody who only deals physical damage, like an ogre) Trivial.

Since it can render encounters Trivial, you need to input Counters, and that's always going to feel a bit like targeting the PC to negate their Shiny Nifty Trick. Even if it just makes the encounter something the PC needs to actually engage with.

The flip side of this is any encounter that renders a PC unable to engage. Such as fliers with ranged attacks vs a melee-only PC. Or a red dragon if you have a character who literally only ever deals fire damage. This is always going to feel bad as a PC, and no amount of "Well, you chose to make a character with this glaring weakness" is going to make the player have a good time.

kyoryu
2021-06-29, 03:30 PM
This is going to be especially relevant the more "Absolute" abilities you have. Absolute abilities are anything that can trivialize an encounter unless specifically blocked.

That "Living Fire Form" ability you mentioned is a great example. Immune to physical damage, but gets dispelled by water and wind. It's capable of rendering plenty of encounters (anybody who only deals physical damage, like an ogre) Trivial.

Since it can render encounters Trivial, you need to input Counters, and that's always going to feel a bit like targeting the PC to negate their Shiny Nifty Trick. Even if it just makes the encounter something the PC needs to actually engage with.

I would say that the best answer to this is to not have such absolute abilities in the first place.


The flip side of this is any encounter that renders a PC unable to engage. Such as fliers with ranged attacks vs a melee-only PC. Or a red dragon if you have a character who literally only ever deals fire damage. This is always going to feel bad as a PC, and no amount of "Well, you chose to make a character with this glaring weakness" is going to make the player have a good time.

One of the issues is that many systems reward building hyper-specialized characters. If the system rewards that, then penalizing it through content can be counter-productive.

BRC
2021-06-29, 03:48 PM
I would say that the best answer to this is to not have such absolute abilities in the first place.



Agreed, but it can get tricky.

Part of it is an issue of presentation. Flying is a hard-counter against melee-only foes, but you don't think of flying that way, you don't build a flying character with the idea that 'I will be immune to melee attacks!" and then get mad when the DM uses ranged attacks.




One of the issues is that many systems reward building hyper-specialized characters. If the system rewards that, then penalizing it through content can be counter-productive.

This is where a GM might have the use the least fun tool in the toolbox, the No hammer.

My hypothetical character for this example is George The Dragonslayer. George hates dragons. He puts ALL his points into Fighting Dragons. He can 1v1 any dragon in the book and win about 90% of the time against the most powerful beasts.

Against anything else, George is a mediocre swordsman who will crumple like dust.

If you send George against dragons, he wins. If you send George against anything else, he's barely playing. The player, intentionally or otherwise, has put the GM in a no-win situation. They can't make an encounter that includes everybody if George is there.


The only winning move is not to play. If a character is built to such a degree of specialization that they will either Trivialize or be irrelevant in 95% of situations you expect for the campaign, then the GM's only move is to reject the character.

icefractal
2021-06-29, 03:49 PM
They're going to be emotional, upset, and the exact worst thing to do in such a situation is to start pointing out what they could have done better. They're going to be looking for something to blame (The safest answer is usually "The Dice", but that's not as satisfying), and pointing the blame back at them doesn't help. "You have good disguise, maybe you should have tried to disguise yourself as a guard, rather than going the Thief route". That may have worked, but that's either an idea they had or discarded, or it's one they didn't think of. Either way, if doesn't help them right now to hear about what they could have done. They're not going to suddenly stop and be like "Oh yeah, I was being REALLY dumb there. Huh, Guess I deserved it. I'm gonna go buy everybody snacks while you work out a way to rescue my character from jail!"
Very true. IDK if this is the case or not, but if you're pro-actively explaining to the players what they should have done differently, or making this a teachable experience, or really anything that requires the players to engage in talking about their failure when they'd rather quietly sulk for a few minutes, stop doing that. It's fine if they grumble or sulk a little, they just need to not escalate to the point of throwing blame around, shouting, or throwing things. Sure, it'd be nice if they took defeat gracefully, but that's not something you can expect or that everyone is even capable of.



In general, I think SoD or SoS abilities should be avoidable, not just mathed out. So, like if you know there's a medusa, you can avoid its gaze. Against a beholder, you should be able to take appropriate cover or whatever. Being removed from a fight should be the result of bad decisionmaking.Understandable, and I mostly agree for SoDs (at least up to the point where resurrection becomes a reliable option). I don't agree for SoS / leave-the-fight type abilities, but I can see where you're coming from.

However, by that standard, aren't a large chunk, possibly the majority at higher CR, of D&D opponents bad and inappropriate to use? 3.x fights don't really go on long enough for "charging my laser" style foreshadowing to work (and without other atypical mechanics like the foe being hugely durable or getting multiple actions a turn, using easily-avoidable attacks just makes the fight a pushover), so for a lot of abilities this effectively means they shouldn't exist at all.

NichG
2021-06-29, 04:33 PM
It is about choosing the character you want to play, and the game, both the rules and the setting, enabling that character's attributes, both positive and negative, to matter.

There are no good or bad characters, only temporary situations which are easier for some characters and harder for others.
And (unless another PC is stepping on your toes) over the course of the campaign all of these situations will more or less even out.

Strengths should matter. If you want to play a smart guy, you will excel at lore and puzzles. If you want to play a strong guy, you will excel at feats of strength. If you want to play a rogue, you will excel at breaking into buildings. If you want to play a doctor, you will excel at saving people's lives. If you want to play a swordsman, you will excel at melee combat. If you want to play a guy who is immune to fire, you will excel when fighting red dragons.

Likewise, weaknesses should matter. If you want to play a clumsy guy, you will struggle at acrobatics. If you want to play a weak guy, you will struggle when grappled. If you want to play a frail guy, you will be susceptible to poison and disease, if you want to play a dumb guy you will struggle with puzzles, if you want to play a guy who is weak to cold you will struggle when fighting white dragons, if you want to play a melee specialist you will struggle against flyers.


This is fine if players can choose strengths and weaknesses purely on the basis of wanting to explore those things. But most systems force you to take weaknesses in order to obtain strengths - see for example your discussion with one of your players about flaws. So a player who only wants to have strengths and isn't interested in struggling with things is kind of out of luck with this viewpoint. And if they conclude 'well, I didn't want to play a character with weaknesses but you forced me to, made those weaknesses matter, and then it sucked' then I would agree with them that you were also responsible for what happened there and its not just about them and their choices. The player only has the power to make choices that you've allowed them to make in your design of the system and the campaign, so unless you're giving them 100% freedom then they're not always 100% responsible for what happens.

Now, if you told players that they could literally write in anything they wanted for their characters' stats, a player wrote down a weakness, fell prey to it, and then complained, that would be a different story. And, along the lines of Quertus' proposed experiments, that would be a good one to try for a oneshot - tell each player they can literally pick anything they want for the character's stats with no point buy or budget or whatever, come in with a character at any level they see fit, have any equipment they see fit with no budget or wealth by level constraints - and then for each of your players see what they do with that freedom. If you have one guy who brings in a Lv90 character with 100s in all their stats in a 3-18 system, and another guy who brings in a plucky Lv1 warrior with a 17 and two 7s, and someone else brings in a Lv9 wizard with 12s across the board and one 18, then you might be able to start to understand what each of your players is looking for a bit better.

And for disclosure, I've both been in a few-shot that did this, and have run a campaign centered around this premise (though more along the lines of 'you tell me what your ability does' rather than specifically having arbitrary stats), and players do not generally bring in all-18s characters. So if you see someone bring in all-18s you've identified a particular player type that is actually relatively rare.

Talakeal
2021-06-29, 05:28 PM
This is fine if players can choose strengths and weaknesses purely on the basis of wanting to explore those things. But most systems force you to take weaknesses in order to obtain strengths - see for example your discussion with one of your players about flaws. So a player who only wants to have strengths and isn't interested in struggling with things is kind of out of luck with this viewpoint. And if they conclude 'well, I didn't want to play a character with weaknesses but you forced me to, made those weaknesses matter, and then it sucked' then I would agree with them that you were also responsible for what happened there and its not just about them and their choices. The player only has the power to make choices that you've allowed them to make in your design of the system and the campaign, so unless you're giving them 100% freedom then they're not always 100% responsible for what happens.

Now, if you told players that they could literally write in anything they wanted for their characters' stats, a player wrote down a weakness, fell prey to it, and then complained, that would be a different story. And, along the lines of Quertus' proposed experiments, that would be a good one to try for a oneshot - tell each player they can literally pick anything they want for the character's stats with no point buy or budget or whatever, come in with a character at any level they see fit, have any equipment they see fit with no budget or wealth by level constraints - and then for each of your players see what they do with that freedom. If you have one guy who brings in a Lv90 character with 100s in all their stats in a 3-18 system, and another guy who brings in a plucky Lv1 warrior with a 17 and two 7s, and someone else brings in a Lv9 wizard with 12s across the board and one 18, then you might be able to start to understand what each of your players is looking for a bit better.

And for disclosure, I've both been in a few-shot that did this, and have run a campaign centered around this premise (though more along the lines of 'you tell me what your ability does' rather than specifically having arbitrary stats), and players do not generally bring in all-18s characters. So if you see someone bring in all-18s you've identified a particular player type that is actually relatively rare.

This is all absolutely true.

The thing is though, "weakness" is a relative term.

A guy who shows up with five 18s and a 12, then the twelve will still feel like a weakness even if it is "above average" by the standards given in the book.

Likewise, a guy who shows up with all 16s has great stats, but if he is in the party with a guy who has all 18s or 20s, then everything he does starts to look like a weakness.

Likewise, in a team game you generally have to set the opposition at a suitable level for the entire party, so a level 8 guy in a party with 3 level ones will stomp most opposition, but the same character in a party of level 20s will be stomped by most opposition.

Its also further complicated by the fact that a lot of players are motivated by advancement, so any ideal character they might bring will have to be quickly transcended lest they grow bored of it.


One could also argue either way; that point buy requires you to take flaws you don't want in exchange for strengths you do want, or that every strength having a corresponding trade-off and vice versa, that there are no objectively right or wrong choices.

NichG
2021-06-29, 06:00 PM
This is all absolutely true.

The thing is though, "weakness" is a relative term.

A guy who shows up with five 18s and a 12, then the twelve will still feel like a weakness even if it is "above average" by the standards given in the book.

Likewise, a guy who shows up with all 16s has great stats, but if he is in the party with a guy who has all 18s or 20s, then everything he does starts to look like a weakness.

Likewise, in a team game you generally have to set the opposition at a suitable level for the entire party, so a level 8 guy in a party with 3 level ones will stomp most opposition, but the same character in a party of level 20s will be stomped by most opposition.

Its also further complicated by the fact that a lot of players are motivated by advancement, so any ideal character they might bring will have to be quickly transcended lest they grow bored of it.


One could also argue either way; that point buy requires you to take flaws you don't want in exchange for strengths you do want, or that every strength having a corresponding trade-off and vice versa, that there are no objectively right or wrong choices.

Well take for example the DM who told us we could write down whatever we wanted for our stats. You could have an all-18s character if you chose to do so, no tradeoffs at all. We could have had a party of all-18s characters in a status-quo world where we just stomped everything and anything without effort. So when we didn't choose to do that, that was only because that wasn't what we wanted to do, not because of all these complicating factors like 'well the system will force a tradeoff' or 'well, the GM will scale up the opposition' or whatever. I don't necessarily expect any given player will perform that exercise in a way that makes them happy, but its a good learning experience to see how it feels when there really are no limits, and the GM won't just take away the power in some other way, and will give you even more than what you actually ask for.

I had a player whose entire gaming style changed because of an experience like this. They were really into numbers optimization, and I ran a campaign where it was entirely possible (and somewhat expected, and aided by homebrew) to do crazy numbers shenanigans. They played a character who could get something like 30-40 attacks per round, tens of thousands of damage, and I think they enjoyed doing it, but they also realized that beyond a certain point it didn't matter. In subsequent campaigns, while they kept an optimization mindset, they looked more for weird holes or interactions in the system that would cause unexpected things to happen or which would sort of transgress the assumptions of the ruleset rather than pushing up their numbers - for example, in a game about building countries and expanding territory, they made a character who held no territory but invented a system of contracts and negotiations - supported by the way the game's economics worked - which ultimately let them act as if other nations' territories were their own.

Xervous
2021-06-30, 06:33 AM
The fire mage has a buff which turns him into living fire, making him immune to heat and physical damage and vulnerable to cold damage, and which lasts until he is "put out" by an attack which deals wind or water damage or if he is in an oxygen free environment.


This is the first I remember hearing of this detail. Sounds like an exceptionally poorly designed ability unless there are trivial ways for a given actor to apply a variety of different damage types. It’s the ghost adventurer problem, wherein they have blanket immunities and only a few narrow ways of being challenged so in order to meaningfully engage them you have to consistently hit the few weaknesses.