Pacing a megadungeon

[gbaji]

First, we had a squabble about the doors. Bob insists that he closed the door in the very first encounter. I told him that he didn't, I was expecting him to and listening very carefully, but he never did. He said he did (and the new girl of course jumps in and backs him up, as she does for every argument). So either he meant to say it but didn't, is misremembering it, or I just missed it, none of which say great things about our ability to communicate.

This is a case of you not communicating with the players IMO. The fact that you stated "... I was expecting him to (close the door) and listening very carefully, but he never did" screams "gotcha GM" to me. Um... Why are you assuming that if they say nothing, that they must be leaving the door open? Do you leave doors open when you go through them? Or do you usually close them behind you? The players may be assuming that "of course we're closing the door. Why on earth would we leave it open?", but you are assuming the opposite.

That's on you. If there is doubt, and the condition of the door matters (which it does), then *you* need to ask directly "Do you close the door when you leave?". Don't just take nothing as an assumption of "they did the dumbest thing possible".

Brian then asked why it mattered, are the ghasts too stupid to open a door. I started to explain that while yes, they are dumb, its mostly about motivation. They won't seek out new prey, and instead act re-actively to the presence of the living, but instead, trying to keep the game moving, I just said "Yes." This would turn out to be a *huge* mistake on my part.

Honestly? A big part of this problem is that it appears that *you* didn't think through how the ghasts sense things, or how they react to things, so when asked, you didn't have a clear answer available. I'll also point out, as several people have observed, that you have a really bad habit of "shortening" answers for people, then discovering that your short/simple answer is 100% incorrect and misleading, causing additional problems down the line.

Just stop doing that. If the answer to "are they too dumb to open a door" is "no". Then you say "no". Regardless of what other information you may provide, the answer is never "yes", when that's not correct.

So, the party comes up with a brilliant plan. They will have Flossie conjure tentacles to block off the door to the room with the sinkhole, and then cast a holy word to drive the ghasts milling about the front room back. Holy word is sort of like a priest's turn undead; any undead who spend too long near the priest while it is active take damage, and they will instinctively free from it. Then Kumiko will stand on one side of the doorway and lob grenades in, while Feurlina will stand on the opposite side and ready an action to whack any ghasts that exit with her hammer. Miles (The new girl's new gunslinger character) stands one pace in front of the doorway with a clear line of fire.

This should have worked brilliantly with little to no damage to the party. Unfortunately, someone either misunderstood the plan, decided not to follow it, or wasn't paying attention when the plan was discussed. Soon, everyone is INSIDE the room with the ghasts, and Flossie is so close that the holy word damaged that no matter where they are, giving the ghasts no place to free, so they rush her through the gap between the front line and take her and miles down, and cause a lot of damage to Kumiko and Feurlina before being defeated.

So, the small change of tactics, being in the room instead of outside the doorway, caused them to once again be swarmed and overwhelmed.

This is, again, a case of the GM (that would be you), failing to correct the players on a misunderstanding of the world around them and how a spell/action they were taking would interact with the environment. This is not a tactical failure. The tactic was clearly to block off the exit from the back hallway into the sinkhole room, trapping the ghasts in the first room, then using the holy word to force the ghasts back into the narrow hallway so they could be killed easily. That's a perfectly valid plan.

The second the player said that Flossie was moving to a position that would fill the entire area the ghasts could move into with the effect, and thus cause the ghasts to attack her instead of move away, you needed to tell her that. Don't keep that information secret. The player likely assumed one of two things:

1. The effect was smaller or room was larger, and she could move into the room without problem.
2. The ghasts were fleeing the source of the effect and not just trying to get out of the area of it. Thus, she may have thought that once they were in the hallway at the far end of the room, she could move foward filling that hallway with effect, while keeping them "pinned in" and also taking the damage from the word.

If either or both of these assumptions are incorrect, you need to tell her this. It's her spell, right? She should know how it works. There is no scenario where she should have done this and not have been fully aware that the consequence was going to be "a room full of ghasts all charging her". You clearly did know this, because this is how you decided the ghasts would react. Yet, you kept this information to yourself and let her "make a dumb mistake".

That's textbook "gotcha GMing". Don't do that. That was not the players making a mistake. That was all on you.

This sounds more or less like normal adventure design, which I don't typically have a problem with. Its only when I try and run a hex-crawl or dungeon-crawl that I have issues with pacing.

My players specifically really want "balanced" encounters. I would much prefer a more organic free-form approach, but it is not to be at my table.

There is no reason why a dungeon-crawl can't also be scaled into "bite sized chunks". Even a hex-craw could have each hex containing a single set of "things" that have to be dealt with as a group though, following this same pattern (or just random stuff, if you want).

You can design a dungeon as a "dungeon-hack" style thing. But if you do, then you accept that they will rest whenever they have a space to rest, and you don't have a lot of control over that. It's part of the design. And you are the one designing this, so...

If you want the players to be more challenged and not just "one room, retreat" the whole thing, there are lots of ways to do this. I've written quite a number of suggestions, and every one of them works in a dungeon environment.

[Talakeal]

Honestly? A big part of this problem is that it appears that *you* didn't think through how the ghasts sense things, or how they react to things, so when asked, you didn't have a clear answer available. I'll also point out, as several people have observed, that you have a really bad habit of "shortening" answers for people, then discovering that your short/simple answer is 100% incorrect and misleading, causing additional problems down the line.

That's not the case. I explained how their senses worked explicitly and in detail to Pauly in this very thread two weeks ago.

If the issue was just "giving short answers" that would be one thing; but its mostly knowing what the other person was thinking. For example, if you say "Dogs have four legs" and then I but in and say "Actually there are many dogs who have lost legs due to injury or birth defect!" I would come across as a pedantic jerk.

In this situation, he was talking about about a specific past tense situation, and I answered in regards to that situation. The ghasts are too dumb to open a door in the situation he was talking about, where it required them to track down PCs that have long since fled. I never dreamed he would take that as an absolute and then decide to make camp directly on the other side of the door where the ghasts could both hear and smell them clearly.

Its not that they are too dumb to work a latch (or hell, even if they were, they could still open the door by banging on it randomly), its that they were so stupid they lacked object permanence and wouldn't think to open a door for the sake of proactively tracking down prey.

Just stop doing that. If the answer to "are they too dumb to open a door" is "no". Then you say "no". Regardless of what other information you may provide, the answer is never "yes", when that's not correct.

Context exists.

If I see someone with their hands full and I ask if they need help opening a door, and they answer "yes" that doesn't mean they will still need help tomorrow when their hands are free.

The ghasts were to dumb to open the door in the situation we were discussing. That is the correct answer with context. It is not a blanket answer without context.

This is, again, a case of the GM (that would be you), failing to correct the players on a misunderstanding of the world around them and how a spell/action they were taking would interact with the environment. This is not a tactical failure. The tactic was clearly to block off the exit from the back hallway into the sinkhole room, trapping the ghasts in the first room, then using the holy word to force the ghasts back into the narrow hallway so they could be killed easily. That's a perfectly valid plan.

The second the player said that Flossie was moving to a position that would fill the entire area the ghasts could move into with the effect, and thus cause the ghasts to attack her instead of move away, you needed to tell her that. Don't keep that information secret. The player likely assumed one of two things:

1. The effect was smaller or room was larger, and she could move into the room without problem.
2. The ghasts were fleeing the source of the effect and not just trying to get out of the area of it. Thus, she may have thought that once they were in the hallway at the far end of the room, she could move forward filling that hallway with effect, while keeping them "pinned in" and also taking the damage from the word.

If either or both of these assumptions are incorrect, you need to tell her this. It's her spell, right? She should know how it works. There is no scenario where she should have done this and not have been fully aware that the consequence was going to be "a room full of ghasts all charging her". You clearly did know this, because this is how you decided the ghasts would react. Yet, you kept this information to yourself and let her "make a dumb mistake".

That's textbook "gotcha GMing". Don't do that. That was not the players making a mistake. That was all on you.

Out of curiosity, is there any situation where a player can make a mistake and it is actually their fault and "gotcha GMing"? Because the impression I get from this forum is that anything short of railroading the characters into doing exactly what the DM thinks is an optimal strategy gets that label.


In this particular case, it feels grossly unfair that I am required to read my player's minds and know what their tactics are before they do them. They don't tell me what their plans are beforehand.


We play on a battle mat, there is no way she can't see how big the room is. Likewise, we have been playing this game for decades now, she knows that undead don't just sit meekly inside of a holy word and let themselves die.


I don't know, this just seems super infantalizing to the players, to assume they can't comprehend basic cause and effect, and at the same time it seems super unfair to the DM to demand that they be able to anticipate what the players are going to do next.

There is no reason why a dungeon-crawl can't also be scaled into "bite sized chunks". Even a hex-craw could have each hex containing a single set of "things" that have to be dealt with as a group though, following this same pattern (or just random stuff, if you want).

You can design a dungeon as a "dungeon-hack" style thing. But if you do, then you accept that they will rest whenever they have a space to rest, and you don't have a lot of control over that. It's part of the design. And you are the one designing this, so...

If you want the players to be more challenged and not just "one room, retreat" the whole thing, there are lots of ways to do this. I've written quite a number of suggestions, and every one of them works in a dungeon environment.

Out of curiosity, what is wrong with the design I settled on? It seems to be working exactly as intended at this point.


In short, its less that I always give brief answers (look at the length of what I post or the games / campaign journals I write for crying out loud); its that I lack the ability to judge what other people are thinking.

[gbaji]

In this situation, he was talking about about a specific past tense situation, and I answered in regards to that situation. The ghasts are too dumb to open a door in the situation he was talking about, where it required them to track down PCs that have long since fled. I never dreamed he would take that as an absolute and then decide to make camp directly on the other side of the door where the ghasts could both hear and smell them clearly.

No. He was directly asking you if the ghasts are intellectually incapable of operating doors. Period. You are doing really odd semantic gyrations to rationalize your misstatement post-hoc.

Its not that they are too dumb to work a latch (or hell, even if they were, they could still open the door by banging on it randomly), its that they were so stupid they lacked object permanence and wouldn't think to open a door for the sake of proactively tracking down prey.

Ok. But that's unlikely to be the kind of "dumb" that your player was asking about, right? There's a huge difference between being too dumb to be able to open a door, and being incapable of realizing that something they were pursuing which has passed out of their sensing range probably went through that door, and if they open it and continue in that direction they might re-acquire their targets. And one of those is far more likely to be the one your player was aking abourt (hint: It's not the latter one).

Out of curiosity, is there any situation where a player can make a mistake and it is actually their fault and "gotcha GMing"? Because the impression I get from this forum is that anything short of railroading the characters into doing exactly what the DM thinks is an optimal strategy gets that label.

If the player is making a mistake, where the mistake is completely dependent on the player not understanding some basic game world factor that their character should have known (like, "how high is that wall", or "how big is the room", or "how does this spell effect work"), then the "mistake" is 100% the fault of the GM. Period. It is the GMs responsiblity to adequately describe the game environment to the players, as their characters percieve it, so that the players make make good choices for their characters.

And yes. This means that if a player says they are going to have their character perform an action that you know is an absolutely terribly bad thing to do, and that the character should also know is a terribly bad thing to do, you need to tell the player this. Because once you do this, then if they do continue the action, it's actually on them. If you don't, then it's on you.

There's a whole lot of stuff that falls into other categories. Stuff the characters don't know (although that's not a mistake btw, just a decision based on poor information). Or sometimes, they choose a risky course of action that, if it had worked, would have been great, but because it failed turns out to be a mistake. But it should never been based on a confusion between the player and the GM as to what the actual game world looks like or behaves.

In this particular case, it feels grossly unfair that I am required to read my player's minds and know what their tactics are before they do them. They don't tell me what their plans are beforehand.

Except in this case, you said they came up with this plan and then executed it. Are you know claiming that they didn't tell you they were going to use the tentacle ablity to block of the ghast's exit from the room, and then use the holy word to force them back into the hallway, so they could kill them relatively safely? That's certainly how it seemed from how you described it. They "came up with a plan", then "forgot the plan and did <something dumb>" instead. How did you know what their plan was? Do they physically move out of the room so you can't hear what they are doing or something?

It was obvious what they were doing, and why they were doing it. And the moment that the one character moved to a position that would make their plan not work, that character should have known this fact, becuase it's her spell and she should know how it works. That's the moment you tell her this fact.

We play on a battle mat, there is no way she can't see how big the room is. Likewise, we have been playing this game for decades now, she knows that undead don't just sit meekly inside of a holy word and let themselves die.

And yet, it didn't occur to you to question why, when she's got the effect area just leading up to the edge of the hallway, and the ghasts are retreating into said hallway to avoid the effect, and the others are standing at the entrance to keep them in, and tossing grenades in, and they've got the whole thing sewn up, and then she says "I'm going to walk to <X position>", where you know that if she does this, the ghasts will no longer have a reason to stay in the hallway, and will instead charge her, that maybe she doesn't realize that this is what will happen?

You realized that if she did this, they would charge her, right? Why keep that information hidden from her? I'm not telling you to run her character, but a simple "You do know, from your years of experience with this spell, that if you move such that they have nowhere to go that isn't inside the area, they will be free to move about, and will likely target you since you are the source of what is hurting them". Then let her make an informed decision. Maybe she thinks that doing the extra damage to the ghasts is worth the risk. But you have to inform her.

I don't know, this just seems super infantalizing to the players, to assume they can't comprehend basic cause and effect, and at the same time it seems super unfair to the DM to demand that they be able to anticipate what the players are going to do next.

It's not anticipating what the players will do next though. It's knowing what your game world will do in response to what they do. She says "I'm going to do X". You are not anticipating that, nor do you have to. However, you do know what your game will do in response. The ghasts will be unable to escape the area, so they will no longer bunch up in the hallway, but come out and attack, likely targeting her. You know this. That's your response to her proposed action. You know this response, and you know that this is almost certainly not what the player intends to have happen. If this is something that the PC should know, you should tell them.

You call this infantizing, but clearly she didn't realize the cause and effect of her action, but her character should have. So which is better: You provide some information/warning about an action that is likely to be incredibly harmful and let the player make a decision based on that information? Or you just let them do this, knowing it'll screw over their entire plan? Trust me. The players will appreciate the former, and hate the latter.

You always allow the player to have final word on what their characters do, but you do have an obligation to make sure that the player is making those decisions based on the best possible information that their character would actually have. That's not railroading. That's "providing information for the players to act on". That's a good thing.

Don't assume your players have the same understanding of how the world and rules work that you do. Ever. That's not infantizing. It's just the reality of the fact that the game world exists in your head and not theirs. And you can only present that game world to them via the imperfections of language. So there will always be misunderstandings. Assuming that any proposed mistake is such a misunderstaning rather than an intentional self harmful act, is always the better choice.

Out of curiosity, what is wrong with the design I settled on? It seems to be working exactly as intended at this point.

Nothing. It does make me curious why you keep talking about how doing it as "encounters per day" is somehow inherent to a dungeon crawl though.

In short, its less that I always give brief answers (look at the length of what I post or the games / campaign journals I write for crying out loud); its that I lack the ability to judge what other people are thinking.

Yup. But they also can't tell what you are thinking. Be aware of this. It does seem like an awful lot of your reports of problems in your game stem from you having viewA of what is going on, and your players having viewB, and those are diffrent enough that problems occur.

This is why you need better communication. It's why you don't just answer a question like "are the ghasts too dumb to open doors" with a "yes/no". Doubly so if you are assuming one interpretation of "dumb", while your player may be assuming something very different. You are almost ensuring that you will repeatedly run into this same sort of problem if you don't ask questions to clarify things, and then provide clarification yourself when it becomes clear that your players don't fully understand the situation.

If a player says they will cast a fireball at a target 10 feet away, in a 20x20 room, I'm going to let them know that they are going to be within the area of the fireball. Sure. I could assume that the player should know the details of the fireball spell, and should know the dimensions, and therefore should know this already. But it costs me nothing to say "Um... You're going to be within the area of your own fireball if you do that, as well as <other PCs maybe>. Are you sure you want to target it there?". If I'm wrong, and the player really does realize this, and intentionally wants to target it that way, and is willing to take the damage, then they will tell me that, and we move on. No harm. No foul. But if they don't realize this, had a brain fart, or whatever? The player will be really pissed at me for not reminding them of this. They will almost certainly argue that I should have warned them, and that their character should have known the area effect, etc. And no amount of me claiming "but I'm not going to railroad you by taking away your choices" is *ever* going to make that player happy.

I've never had a player get upset at me the other way around though. Ever. Even when players are intentionally doing something that appears insane or harmful, they appreciate me providing the info and asking for claification of their actions. Usually followed by some sort of explanation of their "plan", and why doing this thing works with their plan (and again, one which if I realize that it's not going to work and they should know this, I'll also provide them with that infomation). But yeah, it's not uncommon someone does choose to do something like this, and they have an idea I didn't think of, and when they explain it, it makes perfect sense.

But again. That's all part of communication.

[Talakeal]

@Gbaji: Apologies if I was / am grumpy or defensive; I really do appreciate your feedback. I am just so tired of people using "gotcha" as cause of all our gaming dysfunctions.

No. He was directly asking you if the ghasts are intellectually incapable of operating doors. Period. You are doing really odd semantic gyrations to rationalize your misstatement post-hoc.

It isn't "mental gyrations" its an explanation of what I thought he was asking.

He didn't directly ask if they were intellectually capable of operating doors, he asked if they were "too stupid to open doors" and in the context of the story he was telling, I felt that yes was the best answer, as they lack the mental acuity to form the connection between opening doors and getting to their prey. He meant (or, more likely, thought I meant) that they were intellectually incapable of manipulating a latch, and I fully admit that I was mistaken and misread the situation.

Communication is a huge issue at my table. I am terrible at reading my players, and my players don't trust (or one another for that matter).

I don't know if its because I am the one who tells the story, or if its because I have NVLD and phrase things differently than most people, or what, but people in this threads keep assuming that I am deliberately tricking / misleading / lying to my players. If that were the case, I could see how it would be a "gotcha" game, but I swear to god that is never my intent.*



*Although an NPC might.

Ok. But that's unlikely to be the kind of "dumb" that your player was asking about, right? There's a huge difference between being too dumb to be able to open a door, and being incapable of realizing that something they were pursuing which has passed out of their sensing range probably went through that door, and if they open it and continue in that direction they might re-acquire their targets. And one of those is far more likely to be the one your player was asking about (hint: It's not the latter one).

It takes two people to communicate. I agree I misread the situation, but in the context of the situation, the first seemed more likely to me.

He was asking about *why* the ghasts didn't open the door to pursue them. The answer is because they are too stupid to establish object permanence and would thus aimlessly wander about when not actively aware of prey.

Like, if I am at work, and I ask the guy sitting next to me to borrow a pen, and he sarcastically says, "What, are you too dumb to open the drawer and get one of your own?" I would assume he is calling me dumb for not realizing I had pens of my own, not that I am too dumb to know how a desk drawer operates.

I don't know, to me it feels like a riddle whose answer appears obvious in hindsight.

Nothing. It does make me curious why you keep talking about how doing it as "encounters per day" is somehow inherent to a dungeon crawl though.

Because RPG difficulty is based around resource depletion over time, likely because sudden and random death / defeat doesn't make for a fun game.

If playing optimally and without time pressure, the best answer to every problem is sleep for eight hours and then have the spell-casters solve the problem by throwing all of their best spells at it.

There is no risk, no challenge, no real need for thought, and no need to even have martial characters in the party.

Now, my system is a lot better about this than actual D&D, but the basic principals still hold true. If resources are unlimited, the vast majority of encounters can either be solved by just having a wizard blow all their mana on the right spells or having the whole party just walking forward swinging their weapons.

If the player is making a mistake, where the mistake is completely dependent on the player not understanding some basic game world factor that their character should have known (like, "how high is that wall", or "how big is the room", or "how does this spell effect work"), then the "mistake" is 100% the fault of the GM. Period. It is the GM's responsibility to adequately describe the game environment to the players, as their characters perceive it, so that the players make make good choices for their characters.

Ok. That is a generally good definition that I agree with. Although it doesn't cover nearly all of the cases I have heard people use "gotcha".

That being said, misunderstandings can occur without anyone being at fault. And in the modern environment where the players are often on their phones during the game, I would say they bear a lot of responsibility for just plain old not paying attention.

Its also a dangerous assumption to assume anyone, including the GM, does or does not know any given rule better than anyone else at the party. Heck, I wrote my system, and I still get things wrong on occasion.

Except in this case, you said they came up with this plan and then executed it. Are you know claiming that they didn't tell you they were going to use the tentacle ablity to block of the ghast's exit from the room, and then use the holy word to force them back into the hallway, so they could kill them relatively safely? That's certainly how it seemed from how you described it. They "came up with a plan", then "forgot the plan and did <something dumb>" instead. How did you know what their plan was? Do they physically move out of the room so you can't hear what they are doing or something?

It was obvious what they were doing, and why they were doing it. And the moment that the one character moved to a position that would make their plan not work, that character should have known this fact, becuase it's her spell and she should know how it works. That's the moment you tell her this fact.

I was not aware of the plan beforehand, no.

The players rarely discuss tactics at all, and they almost never actually run them by me beforehand (as they hope to surprise me as a tactical advantage in an act of blatant gotcha PCing).

In this particular case, I don't know how much tactical discussion was actually done or when. I don't know if I wasn't paying attention, was putting away models, was reading my notes, was in the bathroom, was in the kitchen, or what. Most likely, they said something brief and assumed that they were all on the same page when they weren't.

It wasn't that one character moved into the room, the entire party did it.

Afterward, I said it was a good plan, but asked them why they tried it in the room rather than using the doorway as a choke-point, to which Brian responded exasperatedly "Well, that was actually the plan. But nobody ever pays attention to the plan."

But I am taking it at his word that they did have this as their initial plan and then abandoned it for some reason unbeknownst to him or me.

And yet, it didn't occur to you to question why, when she's got the effect area just leading up to the edge of the hallway, and the ghasts are retreating into said hallway to avoid the effect, and the others are standing at the entrance to keep them in, and tossing grenades in, and they've got the whole thing sewn up, and then she says "I'm going to walk to <X position>", where you know that if she does this, the ghasts will no longer have a reason to stay in the hallway, and will instead charge her, that maybe she doesn't realize that this is what will happen?

You realized that if she did this, they would charge her, right? Why keep that information hidden from her? I'm not telling you to run her character, but a simple "You do know, from your years of experience with this spell, that if you move such that they have nowhere to go that isn't inside the area, they will be free to move about, and will likely target you since you are the source of what is hurting them". Then let her make an informed decision. Maybe she thinks that doing the extra damage to the ghasts is worth the risk. But you have to inform her.

This is Bob's strategy in all games:

1: Build a glass canon maximizing offense and ignoring defense.
2: Play recklessly and deal as much damage as possible.
3: Whine, pout, and act like people are picking on him if anything bad happens to his character.

In this case moving into the room seems like Bob's usual MO; rush in to maximize his damage rather than sitting back and supporting while everyone else has all the fun / gets all the glory.


But yeah, in a healthy group I do agree that double checking would be the best option.

I really need to work on checking more often, and getting my players to be less hostile toward such advice.

It's not anticipating what the players will do next though. It's knowing what your game world will do in response to what they do. She says "I'm going to do X". You are not anticipating that, nor do you have to. However, you do know what your game will do in response. The ghasts will be unable to escape the area, so they will no longer bunch up in the hallway, but come out and attack, likely targeting her. You know this. That's your response to her proposed action. You know this response, and you know that this is almost certainly not what the player intends to have happen. If this is something that the PC should know, you should tell them.

You call this infantizing, but clearly she didn't realize the cause and effect of her action, but her character should have. So which is better: You provide some information/warning about an action that is likely to be incredibly harmful and let the player make a decision based on that information? Or you just let them do this, knowing it'll screw over their entire plan? Trust me. The players will appreciate the former, and hate the latter.

You always allow the player to have final word on what their characters do, but you do have an obligation to make sure that the player is making those decisions based on the best possible information that their character would actually have. That's not railroading. That's "providing information for the players to act on". That's a good thing.

Don't assume your players have the same understanding of how the world and rules work that you do. Ever. That's not infantizing. It's just the reality of the fact that the game world exists in your head and not theirs. And you can only present that game world to them via the imperfections of language. So there will always be misunderstandings. Assuming that any proposed mistake is such a misunderstaning rather than an intentional self harmful act, is always the better choice.

Overall good advice.

Again though, it assumes players are paying attention, which often times they aren't.

For me, if my character does something wacky, it is almost certainly because I am either RPing my character, or I made a tactical mistake. In either case, I am fine with suffering the consequences and don't need someone holding my hand.

If there is a genuine mistake, and it matters, well, that's when you break character, explain the situation, and ask for a do-over or something.

Its really hard (at least for me) to RP the NPCs and provide a tactical challenge when I am also having to guess *why* the players are doing what they are doing and constantly having to stop and tell them what is about to happen before it happens.

Imagine, for example, in a game of chess, if you had to warn your player in advance about the consequences of all of their moves and what you planned to do in response. It would be an extremely one sided affair. And I know RPGs aren't chess, but my players and I do prefer a more tactical and gamist system in combat, and it is genuinely really tough for me to read my players well enough to draw a line between a genuine tactical mistake and a misunderstanding of the rules / situation; especially when egos and trust issues are brought into play.

Yup. But they also can't tell what you are thinking. Be aware of this. It does seem like an awful lot of your reports of problems in your game stem from you having viewA of what is going on, and your players having viewB, and those are diffrent enough that problems occur.

This is why you need better communication. It's why you don't just answer a question like "are the ghasts too dumb to open doors" with a "yes/no". Doubly so if you are assuming one interpretation of "dumb", while your player may be assuming something very different. You are almost ensuring that you will repeatedly run into this same sort of problem if you don't ask questions to clarify things, and then provide clarification yourself when it becomes clear that your players don't fully understand the situation.

If a player says they will cast a fireball at a target 10 feet away, in a 20x20 room, I'm going to let them know that they are going to be within the area of the fireball. Sure. I could assume that the player should know the details of the fireball spell, and should know the dimensions, and therefore should know this already. But it costs me nothing to say "Um... You're going to be within the area of your own fireball if you do that, as well as <other PCs maybe>. Are you sure you want to target it there?". If I'm wrong, and the player really does realize this, and intentionally wants to target it that way, and is willing to take the damage, then they will tell me that, and we move on. No harm. No foul. But if they don't realize this, had a brain fart, or whatever? The player will be really pissed at me for not reminding them of this. They will almost certainly argue that I should have warned them, and that their character should have known the area effect, etc. And no amount of me claiming "but I'm not going to railroad you by taking away your choices" is *ever* going to make that player happy.

I've never had a player get upset at me the other way around though. Ever. Even when players are intentionally doing something that appears insane or harmful, they appreciate me providing the info and asking for claification of their actions. Usually followed by some sort of explanation of their "plan", and why doing this thing works with their plan (and again, one which if I realize that it's not going to work and they should know this, I'll also provide them with that infomation). But yeah, it's not uncommon someone does choose to do something like this, and they have an idea I didn't think of, and when they explain it, it makes perfect sense.

But again. That's all part of communication.

Agreed.

But I DO have people get mad at me when providing or asking for clarification. All the time.

I was in an online game during the pandemic. I don't talk about it because it was almost entirely drama free*.

The one negative experience I had was when we had a player at negative HP in melee with the enemy, and the cleric fell back and used a damage spell rather than healing him. I asked "Are you sure you don't want to heal him?" and was met with "Tell you what Talakeal, do me a favor. From now on, why don't you play your character, and let me play mine." and then proceeding to be extremely cold and terse with me for the rest of the night.

Bob and Brian both have extremely weak egos afaict, and they frequently explode at anyone, GM or player, who questions their actions.

*: Which is why I really don't think I am the "cause" of my horror stories; when Bob or my former crazy GM aren't at the table conflict and drama are extremely rare. (Although I suppose Dave and Richard caused their fair share of drama back in the day, and Brian and I fight like an old married couple).

[Pauly]

I’ll reply quickly since my name was invoked earlier. Haven’t had time to read everything properly so a full reply will be forthcoming later.

1) Re ghasts’ senses. We established that ghasts see to LOS. Their sense of smell is ‘keen’, but we didn’t discuss whether this was keen for a human or bloodhound type keen. I raised the issue of air circulation in an enclosed underground system and how that may affect detection by smell, but we didn’t take it further. Hearing was implied in the ghasts responding to hunting calls, but not specified in detail as to whether turning undead had affe ted their hearing and since eardrums are very thin skin I would assume their hearing would be less than a normal human’s.

2) Can ghasts open doors. If the unambiguous question was “are ghasts too dumb to open doors” and the unambiguous answer was “yes” then the voice of god has spoken and the game world has been altered. I’ve made plenty of these types of mistakes as a GM and my policy is to always defer to the player’s understanding of the question and answer if the player’s understanding is a reasonable and especially if they have taken action based on my imperfect description of the world.

3) Re Holy Word spell. Talakeal. I would be grateful if you could post the exact wording of the spell description that is in the player’s manual.

[Kish]

Anyone can do that, the system's current rules are in his sig.

Holy Word
Basic Action (Conviction, Verbal)
This ability requires the priest to hold aloft their holy symbol and speak the true name of their god. At the start of the priest’s next turn, all unholy creatures within earshot of the priest test for damage with an adjustment equal to five plus five times the priest’s animus score. So long as the priest keeps their holy symbol raised, a basic action, they can repeat this ability indefinitely for no additional mana.
This ability affects all undead, even incorporeal ones, and spirits, including ethereal ones, who are opposed to the priest’s god. For Olympians, this typically means demons; for Hellish powers, it means angels and loa; and for Titans, it means fallen demiurges of the same type and all demiurges who belong to the opposing elemental parliament. What spirits oppose more obscure faiths needs to be worked out with the Gamekeeper.
The avatars and changeling descendants of affected spirits must also test for damage, but are considered resistant to this effect.

[gbaji]

@Gbaji: Apologies if I was / am grumpy or defensive; I really do appreciate your feedback. I am just so tired of people using "gotcha" as cause of all our gaming dysfunctions.

Sure. And let me be clear. I'm not accusing you of intending this. Just stating that this is how these sorts of things can be percieved by players, fair or not. And it's something that GMs have to be almost hyper aware of.

I remember playing in a longish gaming session with one of our party time GMs. He was one of those guys who just loves to inflict pain and suffering and feels he's not doing his job if you aren't feeling the pain, so to speak (yeah, he doesn't GM often in or main game for this very reason since it doesn't fit well with "high fantasy" we're going for, but is great for one shots). I had a spellcaster with a defensive spell that was quite powerful, but it seemed like every single time we got attacked (often at night and via ambush and via volleys of arrows) he managed to roll a crit or very high damage roll, and get right through my defenses. We're talking there should have been a less than 5% chance of me taking any damage at all, yet any set of 2 or 3 attacks *always* got damage though and my character more or less spent the fight out of commission. He could have just been incredibly lucky on his die rolls, maybe, but after it happened every single time for like a dozen encounters in a row, it got very much old. I remember complaining aboout this to one of my other co-GMs, and we kinda had both agreed that this GM was probably fudging things to "make things more interesting", but not really realizing that he was doing it every single time, and that as a result I basically never got to use my character at all.

Fast forward to a year or so later, and I'm running an adventure, and the other GM (the one I complained to, and not the one I complained about) is running a similar spellcaster with a similar defensive spell. I remember being extremely aware of making sure I wasn't even accidentally getting through more often than I thought I should. I mean, I didn't fudge at all, but I remember the very first combat we got into, I had a couple of low level folks, and one of them did some really minor attack, and I rolled incredibly lucky and did get through the spell. Was almost comical, since it wasn't even that much damage, but this was a twiggy robe wearer, so it actually took the character down. I remember being very very aware of this odd lucky roll, and actually paid a lot of attention. I didn't want to repeat the same experience for this player that I'd gone though, even if by accident. Turned out that things went about as statistically assumed. Sometimes got hurt, sometimes not, so it wasn't actually a big deal. But yeah. I remember paying special attention to that.

So yeah. I know how this can feel from both sides.

I was not aware of the plan beforehand, no.

The players rarely discuss tactics at all, and they almost never actually run them by me beforehand (as they hope to surprise me as a tactical advantage in an act of blatant gotcha PCing).

In this particular case, I don't know how much tactical discussion was actually done or when. I don't know if I wasn't paying attention, was putting away models, was reading my notes, was in the bathroom, was in the kitchen, or what. Most likely, they said something brief and assumed that they were all on the same page when they weren't.

It wasn't that one character moved into the room, the entire party did it.

Afterward, I said it was a good plan, but asked them why they tried it in the room rather than using the doorway as a choke-point, to which Brian responded exasperatedly "Well, that was actually the plan. But nobody ever pays attention to the plan."

But I am taking it at his word that they did have this as their initial plan and then abandoned it for some reason unbeknownst to him or me.

Ok. That's a little different than I thought from your original post. And yeah, if you only knew about the plan after the fact, then there's not much you could have done about it.

I guess the only thing I can suggest is that as a GM you try to be more involved in what your players are doing/planning? Have someone else put away the minis, and clear stuff. Part of your responsiblity is to be aware of not just the actions the players tell you they are doing, but why they are taking those actions. The difference between intent and action can make a huge difference. In this case, you might have caught that their intention was to trap the ghasts in the back of the room and/or hall, and make them easy to take out, but the moment the person with the holy word going walked into the room, that plan went out the window.

This can be tough to do, but I try really hard to be an advocate for the players in my game world. I try to actively help them come up with plans, not in terms of "telling them what to do", but in terms of providing advice as to what is likely to work, what will not work, how the game rules are going to apply to situation A versus B, etc. Obviously, the game setting and theme can modify this, but a lot of the time, you and the players are collectively telling the story of how they defeated <insert plot badness here>. You have to play the NPCs and the "world" straight, but that doesn't mean you have to be 100% adversarial. You are also the conduit to the players in terms of "what works". If you can get your players used to this methodology, they'll find that they can bounce ideas off of you, and then actually have good plans that are likely to work. Or at least plans that aren't doomed to fail because they forgot some minor dumb detail that they should have known about.

In this case moving into the room seems like Bob's usual MO; rush in to maximize his damage rather than sitting back and supporting while everyone else has all the fun / gets all the glory.

Yeah. It's also possible that Bob just assumed that the pain/whatever emanates from the holy symbol, so the undead will always try to move away from that point. Not sure here. From the description, this does not seem to be the case, but I can see how someone might assume that anyway, even by mistake. Or... He just got carried away. It just seems strange to intentionally use such an ability to herd the ghasts into a corner essentially, and then re-position youself so that they are no longer being "herded". Sure. Could be that he put "I want to do damge to them all" ahead of the obvious tactical advantage for the entire group, I suppose.

And yes, when in doubt a good player should ask questions. But that does not seem to be happening here.

And if the players are actively negative towards any sort of "are you sure you want to do that?" question, I'm not sure what to do here. Again though, I'm not in the room. Sometimes there are different ways of asking the question that will be better received. I tend to default to the full explanation: "Ok, Bob. Just so you know, if you move into that position, the ghasts will no longer attempt to move away from you and will likely attack you instead, but if you position yourself <right here>, you'll be able to keep them bottled up in the back of the room where you all can kill them easily". Just asking "are you sure", isn't always enough. Doubly so if it's apparent that the player has not really thought through the potential ramifications of what he's proposing to do.

[Pauly]

And, what everyone is waiting for, round three against the ghasts.


First, we had a squabble about the doors. Bob insists that he closed the door in the very first encounter. I told him that he didn't, I was expecting him to and listening very carefully, but he never did. He said he did (and the new girl of course jumps in and backs him up, as she does for every argument). So either he meant to say it but didn't, is misremembering it, or I just missed it, none of which say great things about our ability to communicate.

Brian then asked why it mattered, are the ghasts too stupid to open a door. I started to explain that while yes, they are dumb, its mostly about motivation. They won't seek out new prey, and instead act re-actively to the presence of the living, but instead, trying to keep the game moving, I just said "Yes." This would turn out to be a *huge* mistake on my part.


So, the party comes up with a brilliant plan. They will have Flossie conjure tentacles to block off the door to the room with the sinkhole, and then cast a holy word to drive the ghasts milling about the front room back. Holy word is sort of like a priest's turn undead; any undead who spend too long near the priest while it is active take damage, and they will instinctively free from it. Then Kumiko will stand on one side of the doorway and lob grenades in, while Feurlina will stand on the opposite side and ready an action to whack any ghasts that exit with her hammer. Miles (The new girl's new gunslinger character) stands one pace in front of the doorway with a clear line of fire.

This should have worked brilliantly with little to no damage to the party. Unfortunately, someone either misunderstood the plan, decided not to follow it, or wasn't paying attention when the plan was discussed. Soon, everyone is INSIDE the room with the ghasts, and Flossie is so close that the holy word damaged that no matter where they are, giving the ghasts no place to free, so they rush her through the gap between the front line and take her and miles down, and cause a lot of damage to Kumiko and Feurlina before being defeated.

So, the small change of tactics, being in the room instead of outside the doorway, caused them to once again be swarmed and overwhelmed.

THEN they close the door, but decide that it is *impossible* to permanently block it as it swings inward. We get into a long discussion of how it could be done, but they decide against it, and instead sit in the room bandaging their wounds. When I tell them that the ghasts are going to open the door and come at them, Brian calls me a liar and tells me that I told him they were too stupid to open the door earlier. I try and explain that they aren't smart enough to open the door and pursue, but when there are four people talking and bleeding right outside the doorway they are going to be driven to figure it out, and will be able to open it by random chance given a few moments, as even a dog can often open a latch if they try hard enough.

Then they decide to move Feurlina in front of the door, and I tell them that she doesn't have enough movement. Now, rather than raising the, very reasonable, objection that they wouldn't stay in battle formation while treating their wounds, Bob instead decides to keep his mouth shut and get mad.

At this point Feurlina holds the door shut while the new girl decides to go grab some furniture from the next room and create a barricade, and thus they sold the impossible ghast puzzle once and for all.

But, it still creates trouble, as for the rest of the night whenever Bob is out of range to cast a spell, he makes a nasty comment about how I have *decided* to become very pedantic about movement tonight so why even bother.


Does anyone else have this problem? Where a player will object to a DM ruling made on the spot, but rather than argue at the moment, they just get salty about it and bring it up later, often well after the initial context the ruling was made in has been forgotten?
.

Some comments.
Re closing the door last time. If a detail is going to be important for the next session it is to clarify what the characters are doing. If the party is fleeing then stopping to close the door might put them in danger. The players may want the door to be open to allow the ghasts to wander about and split into smaller and smaller groups so they are more vulnerable later. The players may want the door closed so the ghasts are in a compact manageable group. Ambiguity is never the friend of a GM, if it is important for later ask the players to specify what condition they are leaving something in.

In the description of the spell posted by Kish it mentions nothing about undead fleeing from Holy Word. Having the ghasts flee from the Holy Word spell isn’t RAW, it’s your interpretation as a GM as to how they would behave. Since ghasts have previously been described as mindless and their default is to auto-attack nearest prey then there is nothing in the RAW of the spell description that indicates that being in the vicinity of Holy Word would alter their behavior.
I would also take issue with ‘fleeing’ ghasts deciding to attack the source of the Holy Word spell. If they are fleeing and they are mindless they will try to rather unsuccessfully run through the stone wall.
I know it’s your world and you wrote the rules, but this is a situation where your deeper understanding of how the world is supposed to work may not be clear to the players.

Permanently blocking an inward opening door is a very difficult task, so I can understand the party having problems with that.

Re Fuerlina and the movement issue. I would have been inclined to be generous as a GM because their movement was based on the player’s misunderstanding of the world, and something the characters should have been aware of.

Re Bob getting snarky. Happens all the time, but most of the time people will pick uo and move on in the next session.

[kyoryu]

I'm going to propose a few general principles for this conversation going forward:

1. Let's assume that you're acting in good faith and no maliciousness towards your players. Talakeal, assume that nobody is claiming you are. Any issues or suboptimal behavior is assumed to be unintentional.
2. Let's assume that blame is not the issue here. Nobody is trying to say that anybody is bad. The goal is "what went wrong, and how can it be improved?"
3. We're talking to you, Talakeal, and as such, most of our advice will be "here's what you can do better." Because we aren't talking to your players.
4. We know there are reasons you did things. We know you think it was the right thing. Again, this is not about being "bad". It's about being "effective".

It isn't "mental gyrations" its an explanation of what I thought he was asking.

He didn't directly ask if they were intellectually capable of operating doors, he asked if they were "too stupid to open doors" and in the context of the story he was telling, I felt that yes was the best answer, as they lack the mental acuity to form the connection between opening doors and getting to their prey. He meant (or, more likely, thought I meant) that they were intellectually incapable of manipulating a latch, and I fully admit that I was mistaken and misread the situation.

Cool. Here's a lesson. Don't just answer the question. If the PC knows enough to know the answer, give them why it's the answer.

"Nah, they're too dumb to follow you out - they just react to immediate stimuli, and if they can't see you or hear you, they're going to break off contact." If that doesn't actually answer the question, it probably gives a clue to the player that it's not answering their actual question.

Another way to put it is that you should make sure you're clear of what question you're actually answering. I think you identified that, so good there. But since you can't really know if you're answering the question that's actually being asked, you can clarify that, either directly or by including it in the answer.

Communication is a huge issue at my table. I am terrible at reading my players, and my players don't trust (or one another for that matter).

I think this is a massive part of the issue.

I don't know if its because I am the one who tells the story, or if its because I have NVLD and phrase things differently than most people, or what, but people in this threads keep assuming that I am deliberately tricking / misleading / lying to my players. If that were the case, I could see how it would be a "gotcha" game, but I swear to god that is never my intent.*

I don't think anyone here thinks that you are doing this by intent, and I'm going to refer to the principles I started the post with.

Also, a player will perceive a game as "gotcha" if they see information that they should have had become relevant, they make decisions based on bad assumptions that should have been corrected, and get screwed for it, they're going to call it a "gotcha" game.

Since you seem to have problems communicating and knowing what information is relevant, I recommend a few things:

1. Overcommunicate. Give more information than you think is necessary.
2. Tell you why they know what they know, and the context. "Can they follow us?" "No, they're too immediate simulation-based. As soon as they lose sight/sound of you, they'll break the chase".
3. When someone does something that is an obviously bad thing, make sure they have the information that they should have that would make it obvious it's a bad thing. "Oh, you're casting your tentacle spell? You know that if that makes it so the targeted creature has no place to go, they'll just go through it, right?" Those are all things the players should know.
4. For you, especially, I'd recommend avoiding "hidden info" encounters. To use the over-used troll example, the goal should be to get them aware of troll's weakness to fire quickly, and let the encounter be about "how do we leverage this?" rather than "let's figure out the weakness here".

It takes two people to communicate. I agree I misread the situation, but in the context of the situation, the first seemed more likely to me.

The problem is that, as the GM, you are in a privileged position. You are the one that knows the information, and whose knowledge is authoritative. As such, the onus primarily lies upon you to ensure that you are communicating sufficiently. Your job is to make sure that you accurately ask the question that is being asked, to the ability that the PC would have that information. In a "normal" conversation, that is more of a meeting in the middle as you work to understand each other. However, in this case, the goal is that the players understand you. Or, more accurately perhaps, that they get an accurate view of the information that you possess.

He was asking about *why* the ghasts didn't open the door to pursue them. The answer is because they are too stupid to establish object permanence and would thus aimlessly wander about when not actively aware of prey.

Go one step deeper. Not just "because they're dumb". "Because they don't seem to have any real object permanence, they seemed to give up as soon as they lost line of sight with you."

Because RPG difficulty is based around resource depletion over time, likely because sudden and random death / defeat doesn't make for a fun game.

Well that's one thing it's based around. Not necessarily the only one.

If playing optimally and without time pressure, the best answer to every problem is sleep for eight hours and then have the spell-casters solve the problem by throwing all of their best spells at it.

Here's a simple structure that might help.

PCs require level^3 XP to level up. (whether through xp directly or gp for xp).
Encounters give level^2 xp (directly or not)
Encounters require level^1 resources to overcome.
Characters have level^1 resources available.
Camping in the dungeon is not viable.
The dungeon will restock itself (at least monsters, maybe not treasure) between visits.
(you can add a linear multiplier anywhere that's appropriate)

So, you can't hit an encounter, rest, and go to the next one. You have to start at the "beginning" (which shouldn't be a linear set of encounters, obviously).
Even just hitting level 1 encounters will end up being really obnoxious to get level 3 - you'll need four trips into the dungeon. You'll need nine to hit level 4. On the other hand, go get to level 4 could be done in one trip if you do all level 3 encounters.

Now, you don't have to plan. You don't have to force things. If people really want to do that, let them, I guess. Sounds boring for them, and I suspect they'd eventually realize how suboptimal it is.

Ok. That is a generally good definition that I agree with. Although it doesn't cover nearly all of the cases I have heard people use "gotcha".

That being said, misunderstandings can occur without anyone being at fault. And in the modern environment where the players are often on their phones during the game, I would say they bear a lot of responsibility for just plain old not paying attention.

Which is why we should not worry about fault. Forget about fault. Worry more about making things better, and the only person that you can really influence is you. So it needs to really be about "what can Talakeal do to make things better?" And making sure people know obvious things that their characters would know is an easy win. Regardless of whether or not they "should" have known them.

Worry less about who is at fault, and more about what you can do to make the game better. The cure to people saying it's a "gotcha" game is to give more info. Period.

Its also a dangerous assumption to assume anyone, including the GM, does or does not know any given rule better than anyone else at the party. Heck, I wrote my system, and I still get things wrong on occasion.

However the GM is the authoritative voice. And if you're going to get it wrong, saying what you are going to do is the best way to get a correction.

I was not aware of the plan beforehand, no.

The players rarely discuss tactics at all, and they almost never actually run them by me beforehand (as they hope to surprise me as a tactical advantage in an act of blatant gotcha PCing).

It would be worth asking why this is.

In general, I think it's good to ask that question generally. Assume a hypothetical rational person, that is playing in an arbitrary game. Why would such hypothetical person engage in this behavior?

Imagine, for example, in a game of chess, if you had to warn your player in advance about the consequences of all of their moves and what you planned to do in response. It would be an extremely one sided affair. And I know RPGs aren't chess, but my players and I do prefer a more tactical and gamist system in combat, and it is genuinely really tough for me to read my players well enough to draw a line between a genuine tactical mistake and a misunderstanding of the rules / situation; especially when egos and trust issues are brought into play.

This is not a good analogy, frankly. Simply because the entire information that is necessary to play chess is clearly visible on the chessboard. We're talking about accuracy and completeness of information, here.

A spellcaster knows what a fireball does. They may know what monsters have weakness/resistances to fireballs. This is all basic game knowledge, like knowing how a knight moves.

The challenge in your game, the "gamist" part, should be from how the opponent responds. It shouldn't, generally, be from the basic game physics.

In chess, if you were teaching someone to play, and they put a piece where a knight could capture it, you might tell them how the knight moves so that they'd be aware of that. You wouldn't necessarily tell them what you were going to do. They shouldn't get surprised by a knight jumping over pieces, or a pawn moving en passant. They should be surprised by you making an awesome move in response to theirs.

*: Which is why I really don't think I am the "cause" of my horror stories; when Bob or my former crazy GM aren't at the table conflict and drama are extremely rare. (Although I suppose Dave and Richard caused their fair share of drama back in the day, and Brian and I fight like an old married couple).

Again, worry less about who is at fault, and worry more about what you can do to make things better.

[Talakeal]

1) Re ghasts’ senses. We established that ghasts see to LOS. Their sense of smell is ‘keen’, but we didn’t discuss whether this was keen for a human or bloodhound type keen. I raised the issue of air circulation in an enclosed underground system and how that may affect detection by smell, but we didn’t take it further. Hearing was implied in the ghasts responding to hunting calls, but not specified in detail as to whether turning undead had affected their hearing and since eardrums are very thin skin I would assume their hearing would be less than a normal human’s.

They have the scent trait, but don't have a bonus to perception, so significantly better than a human but worse than a dog's.

They can see light cast by living and undead beings (a different shade for each) and can thus tell who is alive and ignore most darkness.

Aside from that, they have the same senses as they did in life.

My system does not have facing.

2) Can ghasts open doors. If the unambiguous question was “are ghasts too dumb to open doors” and the unambiguous answer was “yes” then the voice of god has spoken and the game world has been altered. I’ve made plenty of these types of mistakes as a GM and my policy is to always defer to the player’s understanding of the question and answer if the player’s understanding is a reasonable and especially if they have taken action based on my imperfect description of the world.

Agreed.

The thing was, in the context, he asked why they didn't pursue them through a door and asked if they were just too dumb, and in that context I felt yes was the best succinct answer as the reason they would not pursue doors is they lack object permanence. I could have (and in hindsight absolutely should have) given a longer answer, but it was getting late and I was trying to keep the game moving.

3) Re Holy Word spell. Talakeal. I would be grateful if you could post the exact wording of the spell description that is in the player’s manual.

Ninjad.

And if the players are actively negative towards any sort of "are you sure you want to do that?" question, I'm not sure what to do here. Again though, I'm not in the room. Sometimes there are different ways of asking the question that will be better received. I tend to default to the full explanation: "Ok, Bob. Just so you know, if you move into that position, the ghasts will no longer attempt to move away from you and will likely attack you instead, but if you position yourself <right here>, you'll be able to keep them bottled up in the back of the room where you all can kill them easily". Just asking "are you sure", isn't always enough. Doubly so if it's apparent that the player has not really thought through the potential ramifications of what he's proposing to do.

Good advice. Thank you.

This can be tough to do, but I try really hard to be an advocate for the players in my game world. I try to actively help them come up with plans, not in terms of "telling them what to do", but in terms of providing advice as to what is likely to work, what will not work, how the game rules are going to apply to situation A versus B, etc. Obviously, the game setting and theme can modify this, but a lot of the time, you and the players are collectively telling the story of how they defeated <insert plot badness here>. You have to play the NPCs and the "world" straight, but that doesn't mean you have to be 100% adversarial. You are also the conduit to the players in terms of "what works". If you can get your players used to this methodology, they'll find that they can bounce ideas off of you, and then actually have good plans that are likely to work. Or at least plans that aren't doomed to fail because they forgot some minor dumb detail that they should have known about.

Yeah. It's also possible that Bob just assumed that the pain/whatever emanates from the holy symbol, so the undead will always try to move away from that point. Not sure here. From the description, this does not seem to be the case, but I can see how someone might assume that anyway, even by mistake. Or... He just got carried away. It just seems strange to intentionally use such an ability to herd the ghasts into a corner essentially, and then re-position youself so that they are no longer being "herded". Sure. Could be that he put "I want to do damge to them all" ahead of the obvious tactical advantage for the entire group, I suppose.

We went out to dinner last night and I brought the subject up. It turns out, everyone in the party had a different idea of what exactly the plan was, and so when they all did their best to stick to their version of the plan, it was absolute chaos. Apparently I am not the only one who has trouble reading my players, and we all really need to work on our communication.

Some comments.
Re closing the door last time. If a detail is going to be important for the next session it is to clarify what the characters are doing. If the party is fleeing then stopping to close the door might put them in danger. The players may want the door to be open to allow the ghasts to wander about and split into smaller and smaller groups so they are more vulnerable later. The players may want the door closed so the ghasts are in a compact manageable group. Ambiguity is never the friend of a GM, if it is important for later ask the players to specify what condition they are leaving something in.

Yeah. In hindsight I probably should have asked them clarifying questions; if anything to lead by example.

Honestly, the status of the doors in the dungeon probably should have a bit more attention to them; they have been left unmaintained for decades in a damp environment, and the PCs tend to literally kick them open when exploring, so many of them likely couldn't be closed again if they wanted to.

In the description of the spell posted by Kish it mentions nothing about undead fleeing from Holy Word. Having the ghasts flee from the Holy Word spell isn’t RAW, it’s your interpretation as a GM as to how they would behave. Since ghasts have previously been described as mindless and their default is to auto-attack nearest prey then there is nothing in the RAW of the spell description that indicates that being in the vicinity of Holy Word would alter their behavior.
I would also take issue with ‘fleeing’ ghasts deciding to attack the source of the Holy Word spell. If they are fleeing and they are mindless they will try to rather unsuccessfully run through the stone wall.
I know it’s your world and you wrote the rules, but this is a situation where your deeper understanding of how the world is supposed to work may not be clear to the players.

The whole idea of "mindless" creatures has never really made sense to me, and I don't use it in my system.

The proper term in my system is "feral" undead. There is a brief description of their behavior in the bestiary (and I am working on rewriting it to reflect this instance and a few others) but in essence if not commanded by a necromancer, undead lack any motivation save to kill the living, preferably of their own former species. Otherwise, they wander aimlessly. They still have a sense of preservation and will not enter an obvious trap (although they do not fear for their lives and will gladly sacrifice themselves if they can take prey out with them) but will not enter a holy area except out of a sense of self preservation.

How I RP this in game, and this is not the first time Bob's character has used Holy Word, is that they will flee; but will turn and fight if forced into a corner.

Permanently blocking an inward opening door is a very difficult task, so I can understand the party having problems with that.

Yeah. I still can't think of an idea like "spiking" the door; people have said there are methods, but none of their explanations have clicked with me.

In this case, they had the means to nail the door shut, pile heavy objects in front of it, or collapse the tunnel with dynamite. And probably some more stuff I didn't think of. They certainly have magical options.

Re Fuerlina and the movement issue. I would have been inclined to be generous as a GM because their movement was based on the player’s misunderstanding of the world, and something the characters should have been aware of.

Re Bob getting snarky. Happens all the time, but most of the time people will pick uo and move on in the next session.

Absolutely reasonable. I probably would have agreed if they brought it up at the time (or at the very least rolled off on it), but instead they just decided to swallow their complaints and be bitter about it later.

[Talakeal]

I'm going to propose a few general principles for this conversation going forward:

1. Let's assume that you're acting in good faith and no maliciousness towards your players. Talakeal, assume that nobody is claiming you are. Any issues or suboptimal behavior is assumed to be unintentional.
2. Let's assume that blame is not the issue here. Nobody is trying to say that anybody is bad. The goal is "what went wrong, and how can it be improved?"
3. We're talking to you, Talakeal, and as such, most of our advice will be "here's what you can do better." Because we aren't talking to your players.
4. We know there are reasons you did things. We know you think it was the right thing. Again, this is not about being "bad". It's about being "effective".

Again, worry less about who is at fault, and worry more about what you can do to make things better.

Thank you Kyoru. Although I have to say, you are making me feel like a whiny bitch :p

I absolutely agree discussing fault is pointless.

I really need to grow a thicker skin, I just can't help myself but engaging when someone makes a statement like "this is 100% on the DM / PC".

This is not a good analogy, frankly. Simply because the entire information that is necessary to play chess is clearly visible on the chessboard. We're talking about accuracy and completeness of information, here.

A spellcaster knows what a fireball does. They may know what monsters have weakness/resistances to fireballs. This is all basic game knowledge, like knowing how a knight moves.

The challenge in your game, the "gamist" part, should be from how the opponent responds. It shouldn't, generally, be from the basic game physics.

In chess, if you were teaching someone to play, and they put a piece where a knight could capture it, you might tell them how the knight moves so that they'd be aware of that. You wouldn't necessarily tell them what you were going to do. They shouldn't get surprised by a knight jumping over pieces, or a pawn moving en passant. They should be surprised by you making an awesome move in response to theirs.

I agree, but the issue is that its impossible for me to know whether or not the tactical mistake is a result of player skill or not knowing the rules; or indeed if it is a mistake at all and not a brilliant plan that I am not comprehending. Likewise, its hard to ask clarifying questions without telegraphing what the monster's plan is.

[tyckspoon]

Yeah. I still can't think of an idea like "spiking" the door; people have said there are methods, but none of their explanations have clicked with me.

Literally take a railroad spike (well, mountain-climbing piton, but same thing - old school D&D kind of assumes the players are going to have the equivalent of full mountaineering and spelunking supplies, and the ability to smash a secure hardpoint into a rockface is really helpful for climbing if you don't care about damaging the environment) and use it to block the door. Easiest is if you have access to the opening side of the door and you can just hammer it into the ground/floor in front of the door, effectively operating as a very firmly secured doorstop - somebody who wants to open that door would have to blow through the entire door/smack the door hard enough to make it break the spike in order to pass it by physical force. Could also jam a spike or two in between the door frame and the actual door, so it binds up on the spike and doesn't have freedom of movement to start rotating around the hinges. Probably a few other ways you could break a door like that, especially if you aren't overly concerned about opening it again afterwards/are willing to destroy the door to get through it. More complicated if you want the door to be a functional door after you remove the spikes.

Will not usually be something you can do in a hurry, but if you have a bit of time to try to set up in a spot it can be a field-expedient way to secure an access way or at least ensure anything coming through there can't do it sneakily.

[kyoryu]

Thank you Kyoru. Although I have to say, you are making me feel like a whiny bitch :p

I absolutely agree discussing fault is pointless.

I really need to grow a thicker skin,

You're frustrated. That's understandable and not whining. But solutions are better.

I just can't help myself but engaging when someone makes a statement like "this is 100% on the DM / PC".

There is one thing that is, absolutely, on the GM 100%: Making sure that the players have all of the information that they are entitled to. Both in terms of rules and the world.

That has to be on the GM because they're the only ones that have that information. Even with rules, they're the ones that can say "this is how I'm applying the rules". This is not a "moral" or "blame" issue. It has to be on the GM, because they're the only one that can do it, with any degree of accuracy.

I agree, but the issue is that its impossible for me to know whether or not the tactical mistake is a result of player skill or not knowing the rules; or indeed if it is a mistake at all and not a brilliant plan that I am not comprehending. Likewise, its hard to ask clarifying questions without telegraphing what the monster's plan is.

I work in software development. A personal pet peeve of mine is, when asked about a decision to make between two values/principles, people that say "you have to find the right balance".

It's useless, garbage advice. It's the equivalent of saying "make a good decision". It's not actionable. And besides, the "right" balance probably changes over time, and things evolve over time anyway.

What I prefer, instead, is "Figure out which way you want to be wrong." Because you will be wrong, and frequently. And when you think about which way to be wrong, it then asks questions like "what happens if I get this wrong?" "how can I tell if it's wrong?" "is there anything that will stop me from going more wrong in this direction?". Those can all be useful questions.

So, in your case, you have a dilemma. A player says something that may indicate they are unaware of something that they should be. Do you correct their misinformation? You will get this wrong, and frequently, because you're not a mind reader. So, what happens if you don't give them the info, when they had mistaken assumptions? What happens if you do give the info, when they already had it?

If you don't give them the info, I think that opens up the way for a lot of hurt feelings and people being upset. It can also help erode trust. What's the worst that happens if you give the info? THat it might give away a move a monster was gonna make? That seems, in the context of the game as a whole, like a pretty small downside. And giving that info can help build trust, as well, as players will be less likely to suspect that you're hiding info.

[Telok]

Literally take a railroad spike

Pretty much this for spiking a door. You aren't nailing stuff to each other. You mostly just jam hard wedges into the edges (sides work better than top/bottom) and wedge it closed. You can try it around your house with some wood shims that are long enough you can get them back out. Just don't jam your doors like a dungeon, light enough to see the effect is fine.

[Talakeal]

Could also jam a spike or two in between the door frame and the actual door, so it binds up on the spike and doesn't have freedom of movement to start rotating around the hinges. Probably a few other ways you could break a door like that, especially if you aren't overly concerned about opening it again afterwards/are willing to destroy the door to get through it. More complicated if you want the door to be a functional door after you remove the spikes.

Will not usually be something you can do in a hurry, but if you have a bit of time to try to set up in a spot it can be a field-expedient way to secure an access way or at least ensure anything coming through there can't do it sneakily.

And this works for doors that open away from you? If so, this is the best answer I have heard, thanks!

You're frustrated. That's understandable and not whining. But solutions are better.



There is one thing that is, absolutely, on the GM 100%: Making sure that the players have all of the information that they are entitled to. Both in terms of rules and the world.

That has to be on the GM because they're the only ones that have that information. Even with rules, they're the ones that can say "this is how I'm applying the rules". This is not a "moral" or "blame" issue. It has to be on the GM, because they're the only one that can do it, with any degree of accuracy.



I work in software development. A personal pet peeve of mine is, when asked about a decision to make between two values/principles, people that say "you have to find the right balance".

It's useless, garbage advice. It's the equivalent of saying "make a good decision". It's not actionable. And besides, the "right" balance probably changes over time, and things evolve over time anyway.

What I prefer, instead, is "Figure out which way you want to be wrong." Because you will be wrong, and frequently. And when you think about which way to be wrong, it then asks questions like "what happens if I get this wrong?" "how can I tell if it's wrong?" "is there anything that will stop me from going more wrong in this direction?". Those can all be useful questions.

So, in your case, you have a dilemma. A player says something that may indicate they are unaware of something that they should be. Do you correct their misinformation? You will get this wrong, and frequently, because you're not a mind reader. So, what happens if you don't give them the info, when they had mistaken assumptions? What happens if you do give the info, when they already had it?

If you don't give them the info, I think that opens up the way for a lot of hurt feelings and people being upset. It can also help build trust. What's the worst that happens if you give the info? THat it might give away a move a monster was gonna make? That seems, in the context of the game as a whole, like a pretty small downside.

Thank you. I am going to have this conversation next time my group is all together, although it might be a while with summer vacations coming up.

[tyckspoon]

And this works for doors that open away from you? If so, this is the best answer I have heard, thanks!

It's a bit less effective because you have to be a lot more precise about shoving the spike into the correct distance, but it's within the realm of easily handwaveable. Working from the 'wrong' side if you don't push the spike in far enough then the door may still have some room to open and the spike just falls out, or it won't stick far enough and somebody can just push the thin end back out; if you push it too far in you then you end up trying to force the door away from its hinges and actually will result in busting the door loose of its frame (but if the door/hinges are strong enough to survive the attack then you instead have a very, very securely stuck door.)

[gbaji]

Also depends on how well made the door is. Poorly fitted doors are harder to spike than well fitted ones. At the end of the day, you are basically jamming the door into the frame firmly enough that it's very hard to open. This can be done from either side (the wedge of the spike forces the door on the opposite side (meaning top to bottom, or left to right, not "my side" versus "other side", if that makes any sense). A poorly/losely fitted door (meaning there are gaps between the sides of the door and the frame) will not spike well, since you just can't get it to jam up.

Obviously, a door that opens towards you is always easier to spike, since as long as you can get it jammed in, any attempt to open it will only widen the relevant cross section of the spike and jam it even more. Again though, a poorly fitted door can be opened anyway (push on it a bit, then pull, releasing the spike, then push again, and the spike will either fall out or just drag along in front of the door). But yeah. It can be done either way.

I honestly don't think spiking really holds up to a determined attempt to open a door for very long, but if it's just about disuading casual efforts (like aimlessly wandering monsters)? Works just fine.

[Pauly]

The thing was, in the context, he asked why they didn't pursue them through a door and asked if they were just too dumb, and in that context I felt yes was the best succinct answer as the reason they would not pursue doors is they lack object permanence. I could have (and in hindsight absolutely should have) given a longer answer, but it was getting late and I was trying to keep the game moving.



The whole idea of "mindless" creatures has never really made sense to me, and I don't use it in my system.

The proper term in my system is "feral" undead. There is a brief description of their behavior in the bestiary (and I am working on rewriting it to reflect this instance and a few others) but in essence if not commanded by a necromancer, undead lack any motivation save to kill the living, preferably of their own former species. Otherwise, they wander aimlessly. They still have a sense of preservation and will not enter an obvious trap (although they do not fear for their lives and will gladly sacrifice themselves if they can take prey out with them) but will not enter a holy area except out of a sense of self preservation.

How I RP this in game, and this is not the first time Bob's character has used Holy Word, is that they will flee; but will turn and fight if forced into a corner.

.

On the issue of reasonable understanding. There is a saying in legal circles “reasonable minds can differ”, basically saying that if you give the same set of facts to 2 different people they may come to 2 different conclusions and both conclusions are within the realms of “reasonable”. I find it a better tool for working with people than concepts like “common sense” or “in context” because “common sense” and “in context” imply that there is only one true conclusion that can be made.

I should apologize because I didn’t grasp the distinction between “mindless” and “feral” earlier, and many of my comments were predicated on ghasts being mindless.

It may help if you write the rules of uncontrolled undead behaviour in a similar manner to Asimov’s rules of robotics. A quick example might be.
1st rule - Undead will avoid and flee from holy places. If they cannot flee they will fight so that they can flee.
2nd rule - Undead will pursue living prey.
3rd rule - Undead will not allow themselves to be destroyed.
4th rule - Undead will muster together if they sense other friendly undead.
5th rule - Undead will wander randomly in groups until they sense prey or other friendly undead.

Finally in your game you are wearing 3 hats. Game designer, setting creator and GM. Your level of knowledge of the world and how it should operate are several orders of magnitude higher than anyone else’s.

[Talakeal]

On the issue of reasonable understanding. There is a saying in legal circles “reasonable minds can differ”, basically saying that if you give the same set of facts to 2 different people they may come to 2 different conclusions and both conclusions are within the realms of “reasonable”. I find it a better tool for working with people than concepts like “common sense” or “in context” because “common sense” and “in context” imply that there is only one true conclusion that can be made.

For sure. I just tend to bristle at comments like "no reasonable person could think X, therefore you must be intentional deceptive" that I get a lot of.

I should apologize because I didn’t grasp the distinction between “mindless” and “feral” earlier, and many of my comments were predicated on ghasts being mindless.

No need to apologize. I am sure I used the term mindless at some point earlier in the thread (likely with scare-quotes) because that's what D&D calls it. Even in D&D I consider it a bit of a misnomer, as mindless undead clearly have some capacity to react to the situation.

It may help if you write the rules of uncontrolled undead behaviour in a similar manner to Asimov’s rules of robotics. A quick example might be.
1st rule - Undead will avoid and flee from holy places. If they cannot flee they will fight so that they can flee.
2nd rule - Undead will pursue living prey.
3rd rule - Undead will not allow themselves to be destroyed.
4th rule - Undead will muster together if they sense other friendly undead.
5th rule - Undead will wander randomly in groups until they sense prey or other friendly undead.

That's more or less how I play it. It not quite written out so precisely, because I want to give individual GM's a bit of leeway in how they will react to any given encounter. Undead do retain vestiges of the personalities and intellects they had in life, and so while they are pretty predictable, they can still surprise you on occasion and not every encounter has to play out exactly the same.

Finally in your game you are wearing 3 hats. Game designer, setting creator and GM. Your level of knowledge of the world and how it should operate are several orders of magnitude higher than anyone else’s.

For sure. But Bob and Brian have been playing under me for decades at this point, I feel like they should have a pretty good understanding by now, even if Bob actively disdains what he considers "useless lore".

[Talakeal]

Well.. we finally played again and... TPK.

This was really surprising, its my first in years, maybe decades, and I am not quite sure how to continue on. Its a mega-dungeon game and not really character driven, but starting over with an entirely new party seems like such a break in continuity.


So, you know how people talk about how puzzles are always hard for the players and seem obvious to the DM? Well, it actually kind of works both ways. The players seemed to have a really good plan going into the big boss fight, but then when it started, I realized that they never actually had a coherent plan, just enough scraps of a plan that my brain stitched it together for them into something workable.

I must say, excellent comradary though; they refused to sacrifice anyone else's character for their own survival, and despite their being a TPK, there was a lot less bitching than usual.

[Sapphire Guard]

Do your players want to keep going?

[Thrudd]

It's easy to keep going. The new party was on their way into the dungeon anyway, or maybe were already in there and following in the footsteps of the first. They find the dead bodies, picked clean of loot (unless you want to be nice and let them find some of the dead characters' stuff). If there are alternative entrances the old party didn't use, now's a great time to explore the alternate approach.

[Talakeal]

Do your players want to keep going?

Obviously everyone was kind of down after the loss. They wanted me to do a new campaign, and I said that I am already running two games and have this one fully prepped, so would much prefer to continue with new characters, and they seemed fairly enthusiastic about making a new party.

It's easy to keep going. The new party was on their way into the dungeon anyway, or maybe were already in there and following in the footsteps of the first. They find the dead bodies, picked clean of loot (unless you want to be nice and let them find some of the dead characters' stuff). If there are alternative entrances the old party didn't use, now's a great time to explore the alternate approach.

Yeah. Mechanically its pretty easy.

Narratively not so much though.

Its just kind of, tragic and disappointing that everyone had a developed character and their stories all just came to a pointless end in a meaningless combat and all of their affairs were left unresolved, and its weird to bring in new PCs with no real connection to anything that has come before.

At the very least the new party is going to loot the old parties maps and journals so it isn't a total blank slate.

[Thrudd]

Yeah. Mechanically its pretty easy.

Narratively not so much though.

Its just kind of, tragic and disappointing that everyone had a developed character and their stories all just came to a pointless end in a meaningless combat and all of their affairs were left unresolved, and its weird to bring in new PCs with no real connection to anything that has come before.

At the very least the new party is going to loot the old parties maps and journals so it isn't a total blank slate.

You can always recommend that one or some of new characters have a connection to the former party. IE Someone they know went missing in the dungeon, they want to find them. Retcon some backstories a little if they have to. The narrative will need to be seen as bigger than the individual characters involved. Who knows, maybe enough of someone's body can be found to resurrect them, so those originals could get back into the story?

I like to run rosters of characters for dungeon crawls. everyone has at least two or three from the very beginning, and every trip into the dungeon players can swap characters if they want, for party strategy or just because they feel like playing a different character. The story is about the whole troop/guild of characters, so when a few of them inevitably die, it's narratively acceptable. It isn't hard to bring in new characters to the troop as well, if you need to, but the players probably won't run out of originals.

[Kish]

Sounds like the game was harder than they wanted it to be.

[Talakeal]

Sounds like the game was harder than they wanted it to be.

Well, that's a constant.

But the wonderful thing about a mega-dungeon is that the players can more or less pick their own difficulty; they could have easily waited until their characters were much more powerful and simply steamrolled the monster, or engaged it sooner for more challenging high-risk / high-reward play.

[gbaji]

If I may ask: What exactly happened? Was this another case of "decent sounding plan that didn't survive contact with the enemy"? Or did they just grossly underestimate the difficulty of an encounter?

[Talakeal]

If I may ask: What exactly happened? Was this another case of "decent sounding plan that didn't survive contact with the enemy"? Or did they just grossly underestimate the difficulty of an encounter?

They went after the strongest monster in the region of the dungeon with no plan and no prep, and engaged it in its lair where it was free to move around.

They didn't try and retreat until it was obvious they weren't going to survive, and by that point the two melee characters had been tripped, which made escape for the whole party very tricky.

The tank offered to distract the monster while the other three ran, but they instead chose to go down fighting.

[Pauly]

They went after the strongest monster in the region of the dungeon with no plan and no prep, and engaged it in its lair where it was free to move around.

They didn't try and retreat until it was obvious they weren't going to survive, and by that point the two melee characters had been tripped, which made escape for the whole party very tricky.

The tank offered to distract the monster while the other three ran, but they instead chose to go down fighting.

Did they blunder into the lair by accident, or was it a deliberate choice to knowingly engage a tough foe?

[Talakeal]

Did they blunder into the lair by accident, or was it a deliberate choice to knowingly engage a tough foe?

Deliberate.