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Thread: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
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2020-10-17, 01:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-10-17, 02:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
On the first point, it comes from player experience. It can be from an inexperienced DM, a bad DM, or a DM who extrapolates the behavior from a monster entry. I've always liked monster society/ecology blurbs becaise that can give hints and ideas to make stuff more than just a thoughtless fight-to-the-death stat block. They often, way long ago, included mentions of prisoners and slaves along side the combatant/non-combatant ratios and how many of a given group might be armed differently from the base stat block. Those are out of style now because additional, optional information is claimed to reduce the DMs ability to use stuff. The effect I actually saw was new DMs doing things like making all orcs always armed only with great axes, always fight to the death, and never taking prisoners unless a module specifically told them to (which is usually a scripted "taken prisoner" thing with a fig leaf of an impossible combat anyways).
On the second point we run into weirdness. If you're using the rules as a model for the character's reality then you want to be sure those statistics don't result in nonsense and sillyness a statistically significant portion of the time (the ranger's animal companion having an 8% chance to beat a 10th level genius wizard chess master at chess). On the other hand if the dice, rolls, and numbers don't somehow reflect reality then you're narrating stuff with occasional rolls at DM determined "narratively important" points, and then you absolutely do risk railroading the player's decisions into irrelevance. Any time the DM decides that the character's abilities aren't relevant, or the player's decisions aren't relevant, or that no result of the dice can alter things, then you are railroading in some form.
Being told "You fail 1 in 6 climb/swim/something checks on today's journey, lose X resources." sounds fine at first glance. But when there's levitation, climbing gear, flying familiars to carry rope, and a difference between actual teamwork versus everyone going it alone, then you're ignoring character abilities and player choices in favor of your predetermined narrative. It (generally almost always) annoys the players. Many players then start to alter their behavior to try to have more control over their characters. That often results in character vs. plot and player vs. DM/narrative problems. Then, when you get to the prisoner issues, you have the problems mentioned in this thread.
I made mistakes when I was inexperienced at DMing. Even though I recognize when novice DMs are making those mistakes it still grates on me when my character sheet and my decisions don't matter. It also grates on me that so many of the "professional" DM advice or how-to books can't seem to address what's probably one of the top ten issues that hurt new DMs.
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2020-10-17, 02:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-10-17, 02:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Out of curiosity, what would you say is the best practice here?
To simply roll for everything? To assume that players always succeed at everything they do when it isn't of dramatic import?
Do note that in the situation I was describing, there was no "lose X resources," the cost for "failure" was free identification of a magic item.Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2020-10-17, 02:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Also it comes from "to the death" combat being the default in most games. If you're playing WoW or DotA or whatever, there's not really the option to peacefully surrender to fight another day. And even D&D doesn't really normalize it. If your experience is that surrender is mostly impossible or pointless, you're going to be skeptical of opportunities to surrender.
Being told "You fail 1 in 6 climb/swim/something checks on today's journey, lose X resources." sounds fine at first glance. But when there's levitation, climbing gear, flying familiars to carry rope, and a difference between actual teamwork versus everyone going it alone, then you're ignoring character abilities and player choices in favor of your predetermined narrative. It (generally almost always) annoys the players. Many players then start to alter their behavior to try to have more control over their characters.
I made mistakes when I was inexperienced at DMing. Even though I recognize when novice DMs are making those mistakes it still grates on me when my character sheet and my decisions don't matter. It also grates on me that so many of the "professional" DM advice or how-to books can't seem to address what's probably one of the top ten issues that hurt new DMs.
The best practice would be for abilities to cleanly apply up a level of abstraction. So if you have a tactical Flight power, that should come with bonuses for various things you could do with Flight on other scales.Last edited by NigelWalmsley; 2020-10-17 at 02:50 PM.
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2020-10-17, 03:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2020-10-17, 04:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
If you meant this:
… then I don't think it's terribly applicable. *Are* there any Cleric spells in editions that pretty much always require Clerics to have holy symbols… that don't require a holy symbol as a component? The only one I can think is "Create Holy Symbol" (which… kinda makes the Cleric much more viable, actually).
I mean, I've *seen* it, but someone suggesting that as "the reason" certainly is surprising.
That's not a given. Some GMs really *do* want to kill your character. And I certainly don't want to run under one whose standard modus operandi is unrealistic contrivance.
Who would know? (Ignoring 3e Bardic Knowledge answer of "everyone around the world")
There's a lot more reasons, including "you've proven yourself more trouble than you're worth" and "the enemy hit or supply lines (and you are expendable / look tasty)".
But, OOC, why would you expect that the GM and the group would put up with dealing with such a scenario?
You've either broken the cardinal rule of "don't split the party", and become The Load, or its a "soft" TPK, or it's a railroad.
Which one of those is supposed to be the "good answer" compared to "indomitable will, CaS optimism, went down swinging"?
Also, some GMs fudge rolls - maybe they were expecting luck (or "luck") to carry them through.
Or it's 25k worth of diamonds, depending on who looks up what when.
Yeah, I'm used to ignoring components (Tainted Sorcerer, Ignore Material Components, etc), so it's not surprising that I'd misremember it by a factor of "XP to GP conversation rate".
Or a 9th level Ur-Priest, or a Tainted Sorcerer Arcane Spellcaster, or…
Of course, if your *last* party in that world had several…
… does Eberon have Ur-Priest as an option?
Perhaps not. But my parties usually *already* have the scroll on hand, so…
Really? I thought, historically, most battlefields were either "bury them" or "leave them for the birds". I've certainly never seen victorious PCs take enemy corpses back to base (outside of animation and experimentation purposes).
Do I? Not… exactly.
I *hate* Batman as a superhero because he's unrealistic. All those bullets flying around, he really should have caught more fire. And be dead.
The one time he did die, it was for story purposes.
Things done "because it makes a good story" make an unpalatable story.
So, it depends how it comes off. Your first statement, about, "you fall, so you learn something"? That was "for the story" logic. Your second statement about "over x attempts, you fail Y of them"? That's game physics logic.
But *both* are "horrible" (to some), because, in both cases, you are picking on one player, making their character look incompetent by focusing on their failures. Also, *both* are horrible, because you're glossing over double-digit damaging falls. If the PCs are taking double-digit damaging falls during downtime, something's probably wrong.
So, sure, it could be done right, but I can see players being thin-skinned enough to be triggered by the words you used in your posts.
I won't deny either of those components: "RPG as ego boost" and "embarrassment" / "made to look pants on head stupid" are very much things one should consider when evaluating approaches in an RPG.
However, critical fumbles are problematic for much more than just those reasons. "Skill makes you fumble more" is just one of the more prominent results of bad implementations; even "good" implementations often have "slow death spiral" and the like.
Fair.
Hey, he used to be a Paladin, and might be an orphan! That's a completely different category than the other two.
"Low wealth" 3e? (Someone with less senility / who else better on History:Talakeal will have to field one closer to home)
Fairy tale Ogre (ie, foe who *seems* tailored specifically to shut down their character)?
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2020-10-17, 05:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Honestly I think it depends on the game, the mechanics, and the play style. In some games failing to accurately identify a magic item with your own abilities absolutely can drain significant resources or kill characters.
In a comedy game having characters randomly succeed or fail anything may be appropriate. If it's a silver age supers game the genius with "doctor, 16 or less on 3d6" on the character sheet probably shouldn't have to roll for anything medical short of setting broken bones with one hand while sword fighting three Martian invaders with the other hand.
The mechanics matter too. If you've got a flat die roll that always fails at least 5% of the time maybe your heroes shouldn't roll for things that normal people succeed at every day. If it's a dice pool where standard tasks have a 1 in a million failure rate maybe rolling for that extremely rare total brain fart is warranted.
How you describe things can matter. If you say it's a "drive the wagon to the next town" check and declare the roads are good, weather is nice, no bandits, healthy oxen pulling, and a new wagon. Well then a 1/6 failure per 4 hours seems silly. If you roll first and then say the roads are just mud tracks, or that all you oxen died of old age in the first mile... Well, post hoc excuses work, but it may annoy the players.
I can't give a general answer to "what should I roll for" that covers the top 20 systems, 10 genera, and 5+ common styles. I think we mostly have the experience that removing a player's agency over their character, and ignoring what the characters should be capable of, causes problems that usually seem to get described as railroading and related issues.
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2020-10-17, 07:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
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2020-10-17, 11:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Don't make it difficult for players to identify magic items on their own. Let them know the Identify spell. Let them have the spell components. Let there be game time the players can afford the spell slot in a reasonable amount of time after acquiring magic items. Don't arbitrarily make PCs look foolish.
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2020-10-18, 09:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
The players could have purchased the scroll and the components in town, sure, but they chose not to, and at the point where it happened they were exploring some ruins (which happened to have a lot of verticality due to the city was originally built onto a mountainside before sliding into a sinkhole) deep in the wilderness. I thought I was throwing them a bone doing something that fit with in game logic. IMO somehow forcing them to take the identify spell or just throwing it in their path would have been far more along the railroad / controlling DM access.
Again, failing the occasional test does not, imo, make the PCs look foolish, it makes them look human. Even the best of us fails occasionally.
This goes back to my initial premise, that fear of failure is really more about pride than railroading.
Agreed, but setting an appropriate DC is not the issue here.
Although, iirc, the actual incident I was describing did have a huge amount of the player rules lawyering / grubbing for bonuses trying to wheedle the difficulty of the task down as low as possible.
The thing is, those are two separate issues. If a guy is really good, handwaving the situation and saying they pass is still robbing them of agency (or at least, a chance to roll the dice) but it doesn't hurt ego. Likewise, saying someone who is really bad has no chance of doing something really hard is the same, but does hurt ego. Saying someone who has a 50/50 chance to succeed when rolling dice fails about half the time when off camera is likewise not robbing the player of agency.
Heck, I once had a situation where I was shooting arrows at a landlocked monster while flying, and the DM simply told me to calculate the average damage and hit chance and multiply it by the number of arrows in my quiver because he wasn't going to play out forty rounds of me rolling by myself while the rest of the group watched bored, and I think that was absolutely the right call as expediency is a lot more important than the illusion of agency the dice give in that case.
Again, what are we discussing here?
I am talking about scenarios where they players can't use all of their abilities for whatever reason (jailbreak, infiltration, environmental conditions, curses, old injuries, etc.)
The "fairy tail ogre" was a situation where the PC lost their mind because I used a custom monster, which was a common trigger in that campaign. It was not a condition of the scenario or something which prohibited him from using all of his toys.
Now, there were several situations in that game where that happened. He was playing a sorcerer who specialized in fire spells, and there was one dungeon (a salamander cave) where the majority of enemies were immune or resistant to fire, a few underwater encounters, and even a dungeon which was located in a dead magic zone. All of these DID force him to put away his shiniest toys, and though there was some minor grumbling (the same as there is when a monster targets him or he flubs a roll) there was no "horror story" or the like.
Specific implementations might be bad, but there are a lot of people who seem to hate the concept of fumbles, regardless of the implementation, because it makes their character look silly or incompetent.
Nor would I.
But surrendering when you get in over your head isn't really a contrivance, and, imo, the only unrealistic part is enemies who execute captives for no reason.
Obviously it depends greatly on the specifics involved. But I would imagine it would be fairly common knowledge if a society practiced cannibalism, human sacrifice, or killing prisoners to preserve their honor. Although, it would probably get obscured by rumors spread by their enemies to make them look worse.
Agreed, one can come up with any number of justifications, but they are all the exception rather than the rule.
All of them?
I mean, yeah, if you are just playing an old school hack and slash meatgrinder where your new character shows up at the dungeon ready to go, then I can see that, but I tend to run long character driven campaigns, were most any sort of set back is preferable to having to start over from scratch.
Not me.
Those are all pretty niche things that, afaik, only exist in 3.5, and still require a high level caster who is friendly to the party.
I believe Eberron NPCs cap out around level 12.
Your low-mid level parties typically carry around a scroll of true resurrection? That's quite a claim.
Battlefields probably not, although cremation wouldn't be uncommon.
But PCs are rarely involved in actual battles, more likely they are caught by patrols while sneaking around or something, in which case I would think bringing the bodies back would be standard practice, especially in civilized lands.
That's very unusual.
It is my understanding that most people expect the DM to weave the randomness of the campaign setting and mechanics into a coherent story.
Using game physics to tell a story is generally the recommended practice in most RPG rule books that I can think of.
That's actually probably the key to the whole thing.
By having a failure, rather than a success, key into the narration, it brings it into a lot more focus.
Its probably the same bias that results from newspapers, that you only report on the exceptional stuff, rather than the ordinary stuff, so people get the perception that horrible and extreme things are happening constantly. So if you say, you succeed twenty times, but the one time you fail it leads into (narrated scene) it is really bringing a lot more attention to it.
That's a very good point.
Who said anything about double digit damaging falls?
The PCs were descending into a ruined city which was broken down a mountainside and mostly sat at the bottom of a sinkhole. It was a several day journey over broken terrain with a lot of climbing involved, and I would expect more than a couple slips and falls, but none severe enough that they wouldn't be healed up while the party slept that night.Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2020-10-18, 01:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Even if that were true, it is not wrong to dislike fumbles for that reason.
But imho most people dislike fumbles because they mostly lead to contrievances or slapstick.
Obviously it depends greatly on the specifics involved. But I would imagine it would be fairly common knowledge if a society practiced cannibalism, human sacrifice, or killing prisoners to preserve their honor. Although, it would probably get obscured by rumors spread by their enemies to make them look worse.
Battlefields probably not, although cremation wouldn't be uncommon.
But PCs are rarely involved in actual battles, more likely they are caught by patrols while sneaking around or something, in which case I would think bringing the bodies back would be standard practice, especially in civilized lands.
That's very unusual.
It is my understanding that most people expect the DM to weave the randomness of the campaign setting and mechanics into a coherent story.
Using game physics to tell a story is generally the recommended practice in most RPG rule books that I can think of.
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2020-10-18, 02:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
It can be. Being unable to laugh at yourself to the point where you either won't play an otherwise fun game or grinding the game to a halt for an argument / temper tantrum is a lot less fun than if you just learned to lighten up.
What do you mean by contrivances?
I honestly can't think of one system where fumbles lead to slapstick. There have been a few funny examples (which are great fun for the entire table and give stories to tell for years), but fumbles in general are pretty rare, and it takes a very special overlap of funny and frequent to actually lead to a slapstick situation.
It really depends on what you are doing. I would expect guards / patrols to frequently bring back bodies for identification, and these are the sort of people that PCs are most likely to be surrendering to. PCs are normally acting on the offense, and thus don't have the same opportunity / incentive to retrieve bodies.
Heck, I remember the last time I actually gathered up the enemy bodies and prepared them for identification after a battle, the rest of the group acted like I was engaging in some horrible act of desecration.
This is obvious, but its also missing a lot of nuance.
The players should also be adding their own layer of narrative, and I would say that the outcome of the game is decided in roughly equal parts by the dice, the players, and the game master.
I also think that deciding when to call for a roll, as well as narrating the results of the role, are pretty standard GM duties.Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2020-10-18, 03:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
In my opinion, randomness in TTRPGs exists solely to give an option for resolving uncertainty. Real uncertainty. If the outcome is certain one way or the other, no randomness is needed. And for heroes (D&D style), certain has pretty large error bars in their favor. That is, it takes a large measure of "chance of failure" (for me nearly 50%) to force a roll, while as little as 5% chance of success is enough to allow a roll.
The fiction layer should always control. If there are possible outcomes of the randomizer that don't fit the fiction established prior, those results don't happen. A rule may say that you can swing off a chandelier by making a <Y check>. But if there's no chandelier around...you can't do it.
The mechanical rules are not the physics of the world. They're a UI layer to help translate between a fiction layer and a game layer. That's all. Now the game is better if there isn't heavy dissonance between the UI and the underlying fiction--that makes for a bad translation layer. Just like having a RTS game controlled in 1st person using a FPS interface would be a bad UI. Or playing an MMO with a controller . Mechanical results that violate the fiction layer can and should be disregarded. The mechanics are tools to help discover the emerging narrative, they're not in control.Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
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2020-10-19, 12:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Ok, they chose not. That's on them. When they want to know what it does they'll make the effort. Let them.
Failing is not foolish. Failing by DM fiat is. The DM controls the gods, the npcs, the villains, the scenery. The only thing the players get to control is their own characters. Don't take away that control by fiat. If anything, run the encounter where the PCs have to climb, the players controlling their fate on how they get atop whatever it is they're climbing. If the wizard doesn't fall good for him. If he does fall then you can surprise him that the ring activates as a Feather Fall.
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2020-10-19, 01:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
First off, I don’t see the connection between a character looking foolish and whether or not the failure was called for by the roll of a dice or GM declaration. Mind elaborating on that?
So are you saying that PCs should automatically succeed at every roll made during downtime (which is, imo, an even worse form of DM fiat) or are you saying that there shouldn’t actually be any downtime in the game and you should roll for absolutely everything? Both seem absurd to me, but I don't see any other way to get around failure by DM fiat.Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2020-10-19, 01:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Contreivances are results when the GM tries to explain what actually happened. Fumbles in most systems are supposed to be worse than regular failures and to always come up with an idea what might have gone wrong to the required extend can be hard depending on the situation. That is even more true in systems where fumbles might the only way a test fails because ability is far beyond DC but a roll is still made because degree of success matters.
As for fun and slapstick : Comedy is rarely a theme the group is aiming for. Even single fumbles can be annoying and i see eye-rolling more often than laughter even if it is the NPCs who fumble. It gets into slapstick territory when several fumbles happen in short succession. As most systems have fumble chances between 0.7% and 5% (ignoring certain dice pool systems where it can get up to 17%) that is bound to happen in every other scene with lots of rolls.
It really depends on what you are doing. I would expect guards / patrols to frequently bring back bodies for identification, and these are the sort of people that PCs are most likely to be surrendering to. PCs are normally acting on the offense, and thus don't have the same opportunity / incentive to retrieve bodies.
Not that is see PCs fighting guards that often or generally being on the offensive. In fact i thing PCs guarding/defending someone/something or being scouts/patrols themself seems more common than the other way around.
But that is a side topic as none of the systems i played in recent years has any kind of resurrection anyway. So body availability does not fator into your willingness to surrender.
This is obvious, but its also missing a lot of nuance.
The players should also be adding their own layer of narrative, and I would say that the outcome of the game is decided in roughly equal parts by the dice, the players, and the game master.
I also think that deciding when to call for a roll, as well as narrating the results of the role, are pretty standard GM duties.
That is mainly because "narrate instead of roll" mostly is done successfully for inconsequential things where the outcome doesn't matter anyway. But people don't argue about things they feel irrelevant.
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2020-10-19, 12:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
It's foolish when the DM assumes they fail.
It wasn't downtime. It was narrative traveling.
To get around failure by DM fiat is just don't do it. Don't dictate what the players do. You can say what they see since the DM controls scenery. You don't tell them how they respond.
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2020-10-19, 12:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
A lot depends on how the failure is framed.
Fail to pick the lock? The lock jams, or you don't have the right tool, or..... those do not make the character look incompetent.
Trying to shoot a target? The target moves or ducks at the last minute, a burst of wind blows the arrow aside, etc.
My general rule of thumb is that "if the thing is something we would expect the character to be able to do, frame the failure as due to circumstances rather than just faililng." Some people go further and frame all failure as circumstantial, but I don't think that's necessary if the characters are trying something that's a slim chance anyway."Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking)"
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2020-10-19, 03:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Something I've experienced may help explain my reluctance to dictate PC success/failure when I DM.
Something like 3 or 4 times I've had the PCs have simple tasks (a few times with written instructions), and completely fail. Things like triggering death traps that they have written instructions on how to avoid, because they want to see what happens. Or deciding to chase a fleeing villian instead of defusing a bomb, with the timer literally running on a plugged-in alarm clock, in a crowded football stadium.
Combine this tendency to fubar simple things and their ability to pull off amazing wins in the face of impossible odds (generally combat only, but once every couple years something non-combat) and I don't feel that it is fair to deny the players input into their character's actions. This isn't saying that events with forgone conclusions need every die rolled. If someone wants to shoot up a monster trapped at the bottom of a pit and they don't decide to jump down to start punching it then yeah, just say how long it takes and the damage done.
Because I can't rule out the players pulling some stunt, awesome or idiotic, I don't feel justified in saying that any particular sequence of events just automatically happens. I ask for their input and, only if they don't want to do anything interesting or different, then we can skip over stuff that should automatically succeed or fail.
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2020-10-19, 04:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
It's about character concept. Some characters genuinely should not fail at certain things. If you are playing a Reed Richards expy in a game of Champions, you should not periodically fail to remember high school level science facts. Having that happen is corrosive to your character concept. While it's true that people do fail in real life, there are actually a lot of tasks where the risk of failure is negligible. I'm not going to fail to order Domino's Pizza, or read a book, or move boxes around in my attic. And while those are all mundane tasks, characters in most TTRPGs are substantially harder core than I am and presumably have a higher level of general competence.
I am talking about scenarios where they players can't use all of their abilities for whatever reason (jailbreak, infiltration, environmental conditions, curses, old injuries, etc.)
Specific implementations might be bad, but there are a lot of people who seem to hate the concept of fumbles, regardless of the implementation, because it makes their character look silly or incompetent.
It's more general than that. Randomness is there to arbitrate between different perspectives on what should happen next. Mostly that's the players and the DM, but it can also be between different players, and not just because of explicit PVP. Having random damage from a sword and a fireball distinguishes between the story where my Fighter stabs the ogre to death and the story where your Wizard blasts him to death.
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2020-10-19, 07:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Is the complaint specific to games like Rolemaster which have a complex fumble table? I typically play games which allow the GM a little more freedom, and don't think I have ever been in a situation where the GM had to struggle to rationalize a fumble and have a hard time even imagining such a thing.
Again, what system are you running?
For me, a fumble is something like a friendly fire accident, slipping and falling while climbing, dying after ingesting a poison, jamming a lock, breaking a tool, or pulling a muscle. I can't see how this would be eye-rolling, especially if it is an NPC.
Likewise, I have been playing predominantly systems with fumbles for decades, and I can't recall any time when there where multiple fumbles happened in short succession, the odds are just too remote.
And yeah, really funny fumbles are pretty rare, but a good laugh is fun for everyone involved, and my group has several stories involving a fumble that ended up being funny that we still laugh about decades later.
That really strikes me as unusual. Dungeon crawls and raiding enemy strongholds are, imo, the default form of adventure for most systems. Being on guard duty is pretty rare.
I think this conversation wandered, I thought we were talking about failure making the PC look foolish, not the DM doing something foolish.
Again, we seem to be talking over one another.
I was never talking about dictating the player's actions. I was talking about the player deciding what they do, and the DM deciding whether or not it is worth rolling for.
In this specific example, the players told me they were climbing down into the ruins, and the player told me that he was wearing the ring and trying to figure out what it did.
So I told him that he discovered that it was a ring of feather fall at some point after slipping during the climb, a statistical likelihood that was both faster and more beneficial than simply telling the players to make thirty climb checks over the course of the journey.
As I said a few posts ago, people are denying themselves (and their friends) fun by refusing to play and / or throwing a tantrum rather than just getting over their ego and lightening up a bit.
I see fumbles as providing the following benefits:
1: They increases verisimilitude and realism.
2: They increases variety and introduces a bit of novelty.
3: They provides mathematical balance to critical successes.
4: They give the Game Master a great tool to alter the mood (I think this is the reason why most people object to them)
I didn't say they were.
I started talking about this in response to the guy who said players have any and every right and reason to complain about any scenario that doesn't allow them to operate at their character's full power as a reason not to run a jailbreak scenario, and was giving examples of various common scenarios that also don't allow the PCs to act at their full power to see if they were all equally objectionable.
I agree.
The idea is not to override player agency, but to reinforce it.
Hyper-competent PCs shouldn't fail at trivial stuff, but they should also be pushing themselves. Reed Richards performs cutting edge science, and a lot of FF plots are about him pushing himself too far and something going wrong (for example, their origin story).*
To me, if a player says they are playing a professional burglar who makes a living by breaking into rich people's homes during their downtime, then it is, imo, best practices to use that as hook. Saying that "The prince offers you a job to infiltrate the dark lords castle" is standard fare, but if I say "Last week, one of your jobs went wrong when the new guy on your crew panicked, and as a result you found yourself surrounded by the city watch and clapped in iron's. But, as you lie in your cell awaiting trial, a mysterious man comes to talk to you, telling you that the prince requires someone of your unique talents to infiltrate the dark lord's castle, and there will be a full pardon in it for you on top of your reward," then that is tying the player's downtime activities and their character's skill in with the scenario.
*I was actually thinking about this earlier today. Years ago I was mad that an edition change in Mage removed the ability to make permanent changes, and one of the other players told me that it was supposed to be a horror game, and that you needed to feel powerless for horror to work. I disagreed, I thought that the horror of Mage was about hubris, and getting in over your head, and the price of success. And this morning I was watching Rick and Morty and couldn't help but notice that Rick's problems don't come from his incompetence, but rather that he is too competent and proud, he doesn't consider the possibility of failure until it is too late and he just goes ahead and digs himself deeper and deeper into it. To me, that is where the horror should come from in a game like Mage.Last edited by Talakeal; 2020-10-20 at 10:39 AM.
Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2020-10-20, 06:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
I think how you frame it can go a long way here. Do you explain that this is a repeated difficult task, which with subpar skill then statistically is going to involve some failures over the course of the whole climb, before describing the specific failure for one of those? Or do you wait to explain that only until after the player starts protesting? The former will likely make it palatable, while the latter is going to make some people annoyed. Getting players to accept your rulings is much easier if you provide your reasoning with them as you make them.
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2020-10-20, 07:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
I think the system i spent most time with was TDE, which has (rather short) defined fumble tables for combat and leaves it to the GM for other skills or for magic. But i have played many other systems with fumbles as well and most allow the GM some freedom. That doesn't mean every GM can come up with ideas what might go wrong with every action on the spot. That is even more true when the GM is somewhat tired because it is a late after work session.
Likewise, I have been playing predominantly systems with fumbles for decades, and I can't recall any time when there where multiple fumbles happened in short succession, the odds are just too remote.
No one at the table laughed, but eye-rolling all around. Maybe my various gamer circles don't have the same sense of humor as yours do.
And yeah, really funny fumbles are pretty rare, but a good laugh is fun for everyone involved, and my group has several stories involving a fumble that ended up being funny that we still laugh about decades later.
That really strikes me as unusual. Dungeon crawls and raiding enemy strongholds are, imo, the default form of adventure for most systems. Being on guard duty is pretty rare.
So... nope. Dungeon crawls and raiding strongholds are not really that common. Especially if you don't use D&D and derivates.
1: They increases verisimilitude and realism.
2: They increases variety and introduces a bit of novelty.
3: They provides mathematical balance to critical successes.
4: They give the Game Master a great tool to alter the mood (I think this is the reason why most people object to them)
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2020-10-20, 10:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Fundamentally disagree. Failure is always a possibility. It is where tension is generated in emergent storytelling.
I'm not going to fail to order Domino's Pizza, or read a book, or move boxes around in my attic.
This definitely seems like a pride issue rather than a concept issue.Last edited by Democratus; 2020-10-20 at 10:53 AM.
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2020-10-20, 11:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Oh, #5 got cut out of my previous post.
#5: Fumbles can also dissuade players from attempting actions which they have no business taking (for example an uneducated farmer attempting to reprogram an alien super-computer). Although this is probably a bad thing if you are running more of a pulp adventure style game, it helps in a game where you want people to take things more seriously and consider the consequences of their actions.
I tried after the fact, although by that point the player had already decided to die on the hill and it did little good. I probably would be more careful about that today.
To me, though, it seemed self evident that if a player is routinely attempting a task off camera, and that task has a chance of failure when rolled for, that they will succeed on some and fail attempts and fail on others, and that the failures are more likely to result in something significant happening and adversity and novelty are often the source of drama, innovation, and encounters with the unknown.
Defense missions are pretty hardcore, as it also means you can't really retreat, and the consequences for failure are pretty severe. On the other hand, if you surrender you probably won't even be taken captive, the enemy will just take what they came for and leave. I can't say I have ever played a game where defense is the norm, to me it seems both really stressful due to the consequences for failure and really boring due to the lack of exploration, but I can see that.
Don't think I have ever seen a player who didn't like critical successes, although I have seen players who think they should be PC only as they prefer games to be more predictable and safe.
Not quite sure how novelty is irrelevant as it is, to me, a fundamental aspect of entertainment, but I guess I can't really argue with that opinion.
As for disagreeing with four, are you saying that nobody ever has an emotional reaction to a fumble? Not laughter, despair, or even frustration? You must play with really stoic groups then if the only reaction you can ever get is eye-rolling.
For number one, it baffles me how people can disagree with this. In real life, I frequently fumble something. I injure myself playing sports and doing physical labor, I ruin my materials when crafting, I have accidents while driving, I offend people while talking, etc. Likewise, it is my understanding that even experts mess up bad now and again, athletes have season or even career ending injuries, doctors and lawyers get sued for malpractice, etc.
Even 3.X D&D, which doesn't have formal fumble rules, acknowledges that there is a difference between making no progress and making things worse, for example falling when falling a climbing check by five or more. PF2 has taken this one step further, using it to allow for situations where something bad can happen but is uncommon, for example if you roll bad enough poison can kill a character, but most of the time it will just make them sick. To me, this seems both extremely realistic and good for gameplay.
I find it hard to believe that I have a great sense of humor about gaming. I take gaming very seriously, and most of my games are melodramatic and edgy.
In your example, I don't find that too unrealistic. In real life, it is my understanding that a large percentage of close combat encounters end up with both combatants rolling around on the ground, and that is also my experience from fights on the playground as a kid as well as watching MMA fights.
To make it more realistic, the GM could simply describe it as enemy interference (for example, a downed fighter grabs at their enemies ankles and pulls them down with them, or overextends to finish a prone opponent with a powerful blow, only to topple over or find their weapon stuck in the ground when their enemy rolls out of the way at the last second) or simply retcon in some setting detail like a mud puddle that makes falling seem more likely.
Depending on the nature of the scene (and player motivation) I can see two outcomes for fighters frequently fumbling.
One, in a more light hearted scene, have them realize that they are rolling around in the mud and have them simply sit back and start laughing about how silly the whole affair is in a sort of Gilgamesh and Enkidu scene.
Two, simply show that they are so consumed by their hatred of one another that they are not caring about defense, and are simply swinging wildly and recklessly trying to tear their opponent apart with no regard for their own safety or comfort.Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2020-10-20, 02:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Last son of the Lu-Ching dynasty
thog is the champion, thog's friends! and thog keeps on fighting to the end!
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2020-10-20, 02:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
The idea, at least for me, is to tie the character's background into the adventure to reinforce, not to negate, a character's identity.
For example, my character in Mage works as a doctor between adventures. If you use that as a hook for the adventure, for example have my character looking for the water of life to cure a patient that I have been unable to treat with conventional means, that reinforces my character identity and serves to tie together downtime activities to those that occur on camera.
IMO tying on and off camera activities together enhances both; it makes character background matter more to the game and it also gives the adventure more personal stakes.Last edited by Talakeal; 2020-10-20 at 02:12 PM.
Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.
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2020-10-20, 02:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Sure, but as the player that would be your choice to have those motivations. If, for example, the GM were to tell a player that their character has, off camera, failed a number of surgeries and earned a bad reputation as a result, the player will probably get upset if that doesn't fit his view of the character.
Last son of the Lu-Ching dynasty
thog is the champion, thog's friends! and thog keeps on fighting to the end!
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2020-10-20, 03:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Musings about PCs and Prisoners
Looking for feedback on Heart of Darkness, a character driven RPG of Gothic fantasy.