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Thread: My players don't use horses!
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2021-01-22, 06:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
But your job as a GM is to make the moment they arrive the dramatic one, that’s why they play the game, so they can experience the drama and the stakes. Whether it’s dramatic because they have to rush to prepare the defenses or because the first stones are flying from the mangonels or because they swear revenge for the fallen doesn’t matter.
If they arrive at the smoking ruins and you say “well, looks like you were too late” and start packing your books up because they failed and there’s no game after that, you goofed somewhere.
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2021-01-22, 06:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
Sure, but usually the term "speed of plot" is used to express the protagonists always arriving "just in time", regardless of other factors. In the context of this discussion, a party traveling at the speed of plot would arrive at the same time (in the narration, if not literally) whether they go on foot or by horse. Meanwhile, the party who isn't traveling at the speed of plot can actually affect the outcome by changing their speed.
In an RPG, I suppose the difference between the two is basically how the GM plan things. Either a certain even happens "when the party gets there" or it happens "in two days, regardless of where the party is.
Yes, a GM should provide drama, but they should also provide meaningful choice and meaningful consequences. Not to mention the world of the game feels more alive, more real, if it keeps on going at its own pace.
Sure, but in that case the problem isn't that the GM allowed the time to pass, it's that the adventure had a single point of failure. If the Big Bad's army is going to attack in a week and the party shows up after two, they might indeed find smoking ruins but that doesn't mean the game's over, just that it's taken a new direction.Last edited by Batcathat; 2021-01-22 at 06:59 PM.
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2021-01-22, 07:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
Punishing players for not using mounts is a lose lose for the players. Either they have to use mounts, which they don't want to do, or they get punished for doing what they find fun. Either way, the players are probably going to be having less fun.
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2021-01-22, 07:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
Right, but because the players can only experience one version of the events, none of the others matter.
The only way this actually resolves into a meaningful choice is if it’s upfront. If the players know openly and in advance how their specific choices will affect the future event. If they are specifically told “ride horses to stop the event or don’t and be too late” then and only then is there a possibility for events to diverge.
If a thing happens in two days and they don’t know that, then the version of events they get is the only one which could ever possibly have happened to them. The what ifs and never weres aren’t part of the plot of this game, and never could have been because they aren’t what this group of players would have done and experienced.
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2021-01-22, 07:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
Any of the above can be dramatic and there is no need to game over. Yet there is a difference between "an event" happens and "the event" happens.
From the tactical combat perspective "speed of the plot" usually means that the task before the characters is about the same whenever they happen to arrive. No sped of the plot means that situation may change, rewarding resourcefulness, ingenuity, and sometimes sheer dumb luck.
If the GM likes to prepare significant notes and plan encounters in advance you can look at the physical objects and know that they were preparing for different options depending on previous decisions and encounters.
And finally - there is an idea of "speed of the plot" outside of gaming. There is a difference, and people are using this phrase to denote that difference. To say that all events in a plot are "at the speed of the plot" is to remove that useful distinction.
All in all it seems that you are either arguing that a certain quality of fictitious timelines/plots wildly observed and discussed doesn't meaningfully exist (it's hard to swallow, and requires a little more explanation and proof) or that it shouldn't be denoted by the phrase "speed of the plot" which is... not even prescriptivist vs descriptivist, because there is no older usage or general rule which forbids it, it's just your own feeling.
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2021-01-22, 07:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
Ultimately “speed of plot” is just a really badly applied phrase to a tabletop game which is driven by real-time human decision making.
It’s intended to describe decisions made by an author in order to produce a fixed narrative, it can’t adequately describe a narrative that has players who are required to remain involved no matter the outcome.
The reason is that in fixed media non-diagetic elements cannot affect the plot, but in games everything is driven by a non-diagetic element, the real-time experience of the players at the table.Last edited by GloatingSwine; 2021-01-22 at 07:42 PM.
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2021-01-22, 07:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
But it matters whether the other ones could have happened or not. If I know my GM is of the "speed of plot school" then I know it doesn't matter how much I hurry or whatever clever plans I come up with to travel faster, since I'll just arrive exactly when the GM intended for me to arrive. If I know it actually matters how fast I get there, it's a pretty different experience, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, sure. Though I'd argue that something like "the army is marching on the city with intent to plunder" or whatever should be enough to make the party realize that their own speed might matter.
Why not? The author having the protagonists arrive just in time for whatever is planned to happen and the GM having the party arrive just in time for whatever is planned to happen are both correct (and rather similar) examples of the term.
True, but I don't see how that relates to the idea of speed of plot.Last edited by Batcathat; 2021-01-22 at 07:47 PM.
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2021-01-22, 07:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
No it's not.
While I was talking about GM's preparations before there is even better example - published modules/adventures. They are something that people can experience multiple times (usually in different groups but sometimes even in the same one). And if the author has intended only one possible moment they will note so and if they intended the range of possibilities they will note so. In fact - in the "worst module" thread there is at least a couple of ones critiqued precisely for taking the speed of plot to extremes. They set up a high-pressure, high-stakes situation and then no matter what you do you are still end up mostly with the same combat encounters and same results. If you only play through it once you may not see it... and yet many players will. In fact "speed of the plot" is an often seen component of railroading (though you may have the first one without the second and vice versa). So in those situations "speed of the plot" actually describes decisions made by the author (of a module) - namely that no matter how clever or stupid, prepared, lucky etc. players are they will get the same series of cutscenes (and combat encounters). All of the above can apply to a GM's homebrew as well
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2021-01-22, 07:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
My argument though is that they couldn’t have happened. Even if the GM wrote them, this group of players was always going to experience the one they experienced. Their characters would not let them do otherwise (both real world and played)
Yeah, sure. Though I'd argue that something like "the army is marching on the city with intent to plunder" or whatever should be enough to make the party realize that their own speed might matter.
For all they know the only way to get there in time is to teleport, unless you tell them.
Uninformed decisions are not meaningful decisions, if your players don’t know the conditions in advance well enough to reasonably predict the outcome of specific choices their decisions have no weight to them.
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2021-01-22, 07:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
Now it feels like we're getting more into philosophical questions of free will than definitions and ramifications of speed of plot. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's something of a strange turn. (Though using your logic, it's the only turn the discussion could have taken, I suppose).
Not knowing every detail is not the same as making a completely uninformed decision. If you're in a situation where time is of the essence, it's quite easy to guess that using a faster method of travel might be important, even if you don't know the exact specifications.
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2021-01-22, 07:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
After a few games where my characters got things like horses and they were lost or got stolen, I get why players might not find them particularly useful. Also, it pays to know your GM. If the campaign is going to be a lot of dungeon crawls, having a horse might suck. (Depending on the game of course. Some games do mention that horses won't enter a dungeon.)
I'm fine with having characters use horses if the quest-giver loans them to the party or something, so it's not something I'm opposed to on principle.
That said, if it's a modern setting, cars and personal vehicles tend to be much worse. Maybe this is just my bad luck or the kinds of games I'm in, but every car or vehicle I've ever had a character own has either been riddled with bullets or totally obliterated. At least with horses, GMs usually have some restraint about killing them.
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2021-01-22, 08:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
This is odd to me, because early in my play experience, 2e and up, starting in 1997(Pelor, I'm old), we always had horses. And that includes when I was a DM (early 3e). Horses got attacked usually only if it made sense to. Hell, in the first game I DM'd, I remember when one of the players' horses and one player were the only ones to make their Will save against a krenshar's fear (wasn't the guy ON that horse, either). Later, that same horse was the only one they were able to get Animal Handling checks to make go into a cave. I remember this, because I told them "that horse either has nerves of steel, or a brain of jell-o". And honestly, given that they had negotiated for a discount horse, I was inclined towards the latter.
My players have even had interaction with their horses as more than background set pieces. Warhorses, for example, are usually extremely ill-tempered brutes. There was one point where a paladin (4e) had forgotten to specify the care that he usually did when handling his horse, and I had it bite him. Which became funnier when he reminded me that he was wearing plate, which includes gauntlets. Stupid Horse.
It wasn't until like 2014 that I first encountered this "we don't want horses" mentality. My first Pathfinder character was a Dwarf Cleric of Cayden Cayleon (sp?). I had a horse and a wagon, and the rest of the players thought that was weird. Until my wagon was the only reason we were able to carry all the loot out of the dungeon. Same with my first 5e game.
People seem to not want horses anymore. And it baffles me, because it didn't used to be the case, IME.Red Mage avatar by Aedilred.
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2021-01-22, 08:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
First argument presumes degree of causal determinism not commonly presumed. People can decide one way or the other even if it's only about what they want to do; but in a game you have more possibilities for their decisions to be swayed one way or the other. Even the dies could have rolled differently - and even if you don't do something like the "enemy army is 1d6+1 days away from the capital" taking more or less damage or something like that can influence the decision to stop and rest instead of going deeper etc.
About the second: even uninformed choices can be dramatic when viewed in retrospect, but more importantly there is a difference between uninformed choices and choices made with imperfect information. There are a lot of games built entirely on making choices with imperfect information, and in almost every TTRPG you don't even have the TT part based on the perfect information (unlike most TT strategies/ skirmish games). Why would you base RPG part on perfect information only? Yes, it needs some baseline but it's not like in the numerous stories (and IRL situations) where people actually know distances involved and average speed of movement etc. there was no "we need to decide whether to send help given the fact that there is a possibility that we're already too late", or dozen other permutations. It's quite dramatic, in fact. So knowing the outcome is not 100% necessary. In fact it goes back to the "speed of plot" and the general railroading - if you are afraid of railroad you do need to know the consequences in advance (or how do you know you wasn't railroaded) if you are reasonably sure that the choice is not cosmetic you can try to choose between different actions with imperfect information.Last edited by Saint-Just; 2021-01-22 at 08:22 PM.
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2021-01-22, 10:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
Interesting. So what was I doing when I set a date for the lizardmen to attack a fort? The players (who found & read the written schedule of the plan) could have rowed over from the island in a about 6 hours, hustled along a road for another 10 or so hours, and been there about 9 hours before the attack. Or they could have gone slower or rested on the road and gotten there just before the attack. Instead they rowed over from the island, then rowed up river at less than walking speed for 8 hours, then got off and ran for a few hours, then stopped to rest for 8 hours at the first bit of fatigue. After another 6 or some such hours the attack went off as planned with the PCs about 4 hours jog away. The PCs wandered into the wrecked fort some 10+ hours later with half the soldiers dead, handed over the attack plans & maps, said "sorry" and left.
So was that "speed of plot"? Because most of the time I see "speed of plot" referenced is like Pazio's Starfinder adventure path Dead Suns. In that, no matter how long you take walking place to place or how many weeks it takes to repair your spaceship, you're always a week behind the bad guys. Of course it also means that no matter how fast you go, spend money on actual vehicles instead of required armor & weapon upgrades, don't upgrade the ship because you take "you must hurry to catch up" at face value... nope, you're still a week behing the bad guys.
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2021-01-22, 11:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
As a note, the value of horses depends strongly on system.
For example, 5e D&D doesn't actually give you any overland travel-speed benefit from having horses unless you have multiple remounts. At most you might be able to argue that you can do the Fast travel pace (30 miles/day) without the Forced March penalties (for repeated fast days). But that's up to the DM, not set by the system.
Which does kinda make sense--it's not like even with horses you're moving all that much faster, and horses have to stop to eat (where humans can famously eat on the march). And horses carrying significant weight (or horses with wagons) tire faster--you can't reasonably move faster than a walk for most of the day, while people can (in theory) walk for 8 hours.
And if you've got wagons and followers (not all mounted), you're traveling at the slowest person's pace (which is why it doesn't also penalize "slow" races in overland walking).
So the main benefits of horses are
* carrying capacity (which depends on using variant encumbrance, because the default is really stinking generous unless everyone dumped STR and no one has a bag of holding)
* "comfort" which isn't well defined in the rules and subject to DM quibbling.
Contrast this with
* expense + difficulty feeding
* vulnerability
* having to figure out what to do with them while you're in a dungeon
horses don't look like such a good deal.
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My particular parties tend not to mount up. Although my current game's paladin has find steed (for a panther as a halfling) and was using a riding dog before that. They don't have problems with boats, however...or at least I hope not (spoilers!)Dawn of Hope: a 5e setting. http://wiki.admiralbenbo.org
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2021-01-23, 12:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
Exactly. "Speed of Plot" refers to your decisions about things like how to get someplace and how much to prepare and how long to rest having absolutely no bearing on when the plot event occurs. Only when you arrive will the plot event happen. You could go on 40 sidequests and get a bunch of magical items, then camp out right outside the plot event location to make sure you're at full resources before going in, or you can rush straight there after a tense fight that the bad guy who you'll meet at the plot location just fled from to try to catch him before he does something terrible, and he'll just be starting "something terrible" that you have to stop when you get there either way.
The module that made me stop playing PFS was like that: we had an NPC who we were trying to rescue who'd gotten chased into a ravine by some bad guys just after a really tense and draining fight. Turns out, we were intended by the module writer to take a night to rest before pursuing anyway. When we didn't, the fight still played out exactly as it would have had we rested, except we had to fight on our diminished resources. We didn't arrive any earlier in the scene, we didn't prevent anything from happening by rushing to it, and we wouldn't have missed anything if we'd taken the night to recover.
That's "speed of plot." Your choices don't change what events will happen because they happen when you get there, no matter how long it takes.
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2021-01-23, 12:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
Honestly I wish I had this problem. My players are always in a hurry to get everywhere. And no, the time constraints are not that harsh, and yes, they've played with me through multiple games to understand the sort of time constraints I use.
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On the subject of horses in particular as a player I mostly find them troublesome. More food and water consumption, more "NPCs" to protect or corral, or leave behind to get stolen at the dungeon entrance. I think it's reasonable to have one "pack mule" at a time, maybe a wagon to go with it. Taking care of one horse and one wagon isn't so bad. But a whole group's worth?
But I'm not a big fan of pets in games at all. I tend to find that they're rather poorly equipped extensions of the character that are often used as cannon fodder by the system or as "motivation" via kidnapping or murder like character relatives. And then I find DMs to be massive sticklers on getting a new one, not to mention the in-game penalties for losing one.
Magical steeds are another story entirely. It it doesn't require food and water and I can magically poof it into my pocket when I need to go indoors, great!Knowledge brings the sting of disillusionment, but the pain teaches perspective.
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2021-01-23, 12:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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2021-01-23, 12:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
The real benefits of horses in 5e aren't in overland travel, but in combat:
* 60' movement, or 120' if the horse takes the Dash action.
* The ability to use a 1d12 reach weapon one-handed.
* Depending on how the DM interprets the rule, you may be able to Dodge and Disengage without using your action (the horse can do these; the question is whether or not the DM allows you to get the benefit as well).
Add the Mounted Combattant feat and you also get:
* Advantage on attacks vs. unmounted opponents smaller than your horse.
* The ability to keep your horse alive by forcing opponents to target you instead.
* The ability to keep your horse alive by turning a Dex save for 1/2 damage into a Dex save for no damage.
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2021-01-23, 01:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
Yes, at a severe cost. Action economy. The horse and you take separate turns, despite having the same initiative count. So if you want to move and attack, you can't split it up. Or you have to ready an action, in which case you only get 1 attack.
And you're rather stuck in things like buildings (or anything without 15' ceilings and 10+' hallways). And become a huge, cumbersome target that mostly gets in the way. That mainly affects Mounted Combatant (a waste of a feat whenever you're not mounted) or specializing in lances (a bad idea unless mounted). Unless you're small riding a medium mount of course. And since there aren't as many creatures that are smaller than Medium (compared to smaller than Large), you waste most of the 1st point of Mounted Combatant. So Small on a Medium mount works ok. Medium on a Large only works if you're basically never indoors.
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But more importantly, I talked about overland benefits because that's what the conversation had been about. Everyone was focusing on overland travel (speed and comfort), not combat uses. That's a whole separate ballgame.Last edited by PhoenixPhyre; 2021-01-23 at 01:15 AM.
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2021-01-23, 01:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
The reasons when I play a game I avoid relying on a transport system (horse, boat, flying saucer):-
- GMs will always find a way to render them useless if you use them too effectively in the eyes of the GM.
- GMs have little qualms about killing them off or forcing the players to lose them if you use them too effectively.
- If the plot requires you to get somewhere faster than walking the GM will ensure an alternate means of transport is available.
- Players will always try to upgrade them beyond their intended capacity. A transport vehicle will be upgraded to a combat vehicle. A slow combat vehicle will be upgraded to a fast vehicle. Excess capacity will be used an opportunity to make money either as cargo or smuggling. GMs or other players will tire of this game within a game.
- Maintenance and upkeep at anything approaching realistic levels becomes another game within a game which takes away from the RP part of being in a RPG.
Unless the transport is an integral part of the game you are better off with you can hire/be loaned/steal one whenever you need one to be used once then forgotten about.
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2021-01-23, 02:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
In response to the original post (have not read the rest of the comment s yet) I stopped using horses in one campaign after about twenty or so died under my character due to random encounters in which monsters ate the horse.
This was a fighter/cleric from the early days of 3.0 who was specced out for mounted combat.
Then another game came along and I tried using horses again. 20 horses later again...
See where I am going with this?
It never failed, no matter who's horse it was.
the only reason the druids in our games started using companions in 3.5 is they advanced with us in hit dice and could be specked out to help it survive via gear, but our horses were always the same with no means of advancement so we saw them as a waste of time.
then our wizard got high enough to use teleport and solved our travel woes.the first half of the meaning of life is that there isn't one.
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2021-01-23, 07:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
This is what I am talking about.
This is also true in most video games: I don't think I have ever played one where riding is preferable to walking: Your ability to look around is usually poor or at least very different from your first-person view, combat from horseback is usually not an option, or a joke.
When my horse got killed by a dragon in Skyrim I regretted ever buying one since now I was out in the hicks and slowed down by being over-encumbered (can't leave those dragon scales behind!). I had relied on that horse, and thus put myself in an unfavorable situation. I never got another horse.
In Tabletop RPGs I make the conscious effort to acquire a horse when I am a player, and I see my fellow players shrug and simply not care. Their characters can walk or ride in the cart, and that's good enough for them. It's not even much of a discussion, ever.
"Hey, why don't we get horses! We can travel faster!"
"Nah."
There's no real discussion on the topic either, nobody argues against horses, it's just a streak of apathy and disinterest. Sure, horses are useful tools for when the plot demands it, but it's not something that has a wide appeal as part of the make-up of the party.
It's a first-person mindset, I feel. Players know their character is in control of their own 5 ft. square and are happy to leave it at that.
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2021-01-23, 12:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
it is totally true that if the DM sets up a horse to be killed for "dramatic flare" but the player dumped 200 gold into that horse at the expense of things like provisions or weapons or armor, they are going to be pissed.
at higher levels, few versions of DND do anything to save the horse, and vehicles are a favorite target for explosions and sinking.
the childish desire of a DM like an angry toddler to smash your toys is prime reason to act jaded about dependency on vehicles.
However,
if you want players to actually use vehicles, you have to make those vehicles worth using. They have to become characters. Characters are themselves, vehicles. Vehicles with containers.
So begin with the theory that a player character is a mecha with an AI. it has weapons, armor, limbs, mobility, articulation, actuation, prehensile ability to manipulate the environment, sensor sweeps for visual, audio, etc. And a personality. Its also a container because it can hold the pilot.
Now strip out the personality and you just have a pilot instead, and that's basically the mecha pilot.
Knock off a few options and you get to vehicles and horses. Horses think. Horses might drag your unconscious body back to the cleric across miles. Horses can kick really hard. Horses can sprint 50 mph. Horses can wear armor. Horses can tow carriages of nobility or carts of treasure. Even horse pouches are a container function. A character's inventory is an expansion of their capacity, and a horse or boat can do that. But if the DM tries to rob the player of that expanded inventory, by robbing the horse, or sinking/robbing the boat, or using plot narrative to make the boat/horse inaccessible, or not useful for this or that scene, the players will find the usefulness of the vehicle/mount to be worthless.
Boats can be decked out with special sails, tough hulls, cannons, ballista, grappling hooks and more. Below decks you can have officers cabins, mage libraries, or treasure vaults. Paintings of your adventuring party that remind them of how awesome they are.
The Show Knight Rider was about a car.. but the car was better than other cars.
if knight rider was about a dude in a leather jacket who got car jacked in episode 1, or had his car smashed by a truck in episode 2, it wouldn't be the same show.
bluntly, D&D editions often make vehicles/mounts SUCK. The are near worthless and ridiculously expensive, and then become targets of misery "awww, your dragon hoard on the 40,000 gp boat is now at the bottom of the ocean surrounded by 10 leviathans immune to magic stuck in a trade deal with the mer-empire... shoulda used a teleport spell."Last edited by anthon; 2021-01-23 at 12:11 PM.
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2021-01-23, 01:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
Some players enjoy the RP and random encounters of taking months to reach a destination.
It's also not very beneffical if only one guy goes on horse while others go on foot, so it's kind of a group decision.
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2021-01-23, 02:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
In any world resembling reality one horse would be a huge benefit to the group. In a dangerous place horseman can scout ahead of the group without slowing it down and will find it easier to escape if he finds any trouble; in a settled place outrider can ride ahead to reserve places and make general preparations so the group will be able to rest sooner or better; even in empty wilderness being able to rest your legs in turns while still moving at the walking pace will allow you to cover more distance in a day without moving faster.
It's just the fact many of those are not really modeled by the majority of the game systems, and without mechanical reward many players will not do something in-character when they will absolutely do so if they have found themselves in similar circumstances.
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2021-01-23, 03:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
It might also help if mounts were more durable, so now the players have a reason to form an emotional bond with the character. You probably also want to avoid your typical dungeon design, as, while you can imagine a dog carefully making their way down a tilted ladder or being lowered by a rope iI]in extremis[/I], your typical fantasy RPG dungeon is not meant for a large quadruped without opposable thumbs. This always frustrated me, because I'd love to play a character with a mount more often. Riding dogs don't completely scratch that itch. So, awkward in a typical combat situation for a fantasy RPG, fragile, and expensive. Is it no wonder they don't want to use them?
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2021-01-23, 06:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: My players don't use horses!
This provokes a question that I don't think has come up yet: your complaint in the OP is that your players don't use horses/vehicles. But when you say that, are you complaining that they don't choose to seek out and purchase horses for use, or that even when they can get them for free - say they're offered free horses as part of the reward or supply for a mission - they still choose not to ride them? Because I think these two scenarios look very different to a player.
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2021-01-23, 07:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Inner Palace, Holy Terra
- Gender
Re: My players don't use horses!
Your party seems little paranoid. My players definitely see horses as a waste of money, but they're plenty happy to ride a boat places.
Horses can't be ridden into dungeons and other adventure areas, and someone has to guard them and prevent them from wandering away or being killed, so it feels like a waste of money to clothe and feed.
Boats though, not sure what the problem is, beside the old joke about how the GM has a slew of aquatic monsters they've been waiting to use and it's always the kraken.Guardsmen, hear me! Cadia may lie in ruin, but her proud people do not! For each brother and sister who gave their lives to Him as martyrs, we will reap a vengeance fiftyfold! Cadia may be no more, but will never be forgotten; our foes shall tremble in fear at the name, for their doom shall come from the barrels of Cadian guns, fired by Cadian hands! Forward, for vengeance and retribution, in His name and the names of our fallen comrades!
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2021-01-23, 07:27 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2007
- Location
- The midwest.
Re: My players don't use horses!
There are only two games I can think of where horses are preferable to walking. First is Ocarina of Time (and that's only because it's faster than walking... and even then, you pretty much only use your horse to cross Hyrule Field to reach new areas, then once you get the warp spell for the new area you don't need the horse anymore.)
Second is... well, a couple series actually: Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, and Warriors Orochi (which a crossover between the first two.) And even then, unless your character is particularly good at mounted combat (in DW5, for instance, Ma Chao was THE best horseman in the game, and considered top-tier when mounted, right up there with Lu Bu) you pretty much only used your horse to get from place to place faster, and you hopped off your horse to do actual fighting because on foot you're more maneuverable, and most characters while mounted would just simply swing their weapon in an arc that it was kind of difficult to hit anything with.
In D&D, horses are just... a liability. They need to be fed and groomed and more importantly paid for, and unless you want to spend your RP time taking care of your horse you have to hire someone to tend to them for you, and if THAT NPC dies not only are you directly responsible for his death but you have to take care of the horses yourself. Furthermore, the warrior classes are notoriously starved for skill points, so either you spec FULLY into being a horseman with Ride and Handle Animal, or you spend those skill points somewhere more useful, like Craft: Underwater Basket Weaving. And if your horse dies, your feats and skills are now completely useless, which means you're pretty much stuck with your crappy basic attack that you haven't specced for until you can get a replacement horse, AND you have to either replace your horse armor or somehow pry it away from whatever killed your last horse, which you're at a major disadvantage for because you don't HAVE a horse, which you've built your character around.
Alternately, you could ignore the existence of horses and completely ignore all the problems I just described. Hmm... I wonder why most players tend to go with the latter route...
As far as travel time? Riding a horse actually isn't particularly faster than just walking. It's less tiring, but there are spells and magic items and so on that remove fatigue and exhaustion.
There just plain isn't any incentive TO use horses, and lots of players have experienced their mounts either being killed, stolen, or spooked and running off, thereby losing any investment they had, to care about them anymore. Horses are only worth it IF you've specced for it, AND your horse doesn't die, and players have zero control over the latter, so why risk it?