Legendary Actions and More of Talakeal's Gaming Horror Stories

[Quertus]

Second, creating a mid level monster that has some way to deal with fliers is hardly unusual, go to one of the D&D sections of the forum and look at virtually any thread discussing tactics or adventure design, its pretty much common knowledge that by mid-levels most opponents will be able to fly and that you absolutely need some way to deal with it. Likewise, in monster manual review threads, it is a very common criticism that people make high level bruisers with no way to counter flying characters, thus rendering something that could be fearsome and challenge into a joke that a level 5 character can easily solo at no risk to themselves.

Third, why is creating a monster that can be a challenge for the party for meta-game reasons a bad thing? This is a game after all. There is no "in world reason" that the majority of the monsters that the DM throws at the party will be within four levels of them, but it is absolutely essential for the game to function.

For your second point, do note that a) *PCs* need to be able to deal with flyers; b) your custom monster did not follow the standard of "many bruisers can be solo'd with no risk".

For your third point, first off, balanced encounters are *not* "absolutely essential" - even before your "no death" mechanic. Second, your concept of "balanced" lies outside your group's range of "balanced". Lastly, afaict, part of your problem is that your group does not trust you to make the right decisions for the right reasons. More on that in a minute.

To the second and third point: rather than listening to what your players tell you they want, you're finding excuses to justify your design decisions on the basis of things done by DMs and designers who are not running for your group. That does not engender trust. Rather, it suggests that no matter what someone says to you, you're going to stubbornly do what you want and then just find some excuse for why they're wrong to complain. Creating a challenge for meta-game reasons is a bad thing when the meta-game reason is in direct opposition to what your players have asked for. Your players have said that they feel your game is too hard, that they need every advantage they can get just to break even, and are reverting to extremely defensive and cautious playstyles in response to your DMing. 'I'm going to make sure to maintain a level of difficulty by designing to the meta-game' is the exact opposite of what you should be doing.

I feel like the constant in these threads is that you're looking for justification. You seem to say a lot 'other people do X, so is X bad?' or 'its normal to see X in old modules/other games/etc'. If you display that behavior to your players, then naturally they would lose trust. If your response to their requests, concerns, and criticisms is 'other people do it' or 'it's normal' or 'but here's an example from fiction that's like what I did', then they have no reason to believe that you care at all what they actually feel or want from game, and nothing they say will ever change your behavior - so all that is left for them in order to pursue change is to act disruptively and push for dominance, so that at least you might flinch away from things that they explode in response to. Metaphorically, they've said 'please don't use my dice'; you said 'I've been in groups where people share dice all the time' and went on using their dice; so now they're coating the dice with itching powder and wearing gloves to game.

I strongly agree with the part that I bolded.

In fact, I so strongly agree, and think that it's so important, I'll say it again: I strongly agree with the part that I bolded.

That said, I disagree with most of the rest of what you said. Hear me out.

Talakeal needs *reasons* for the decisions that he is making. He is making an "appeal to authority" or an "appeal to tradition" or some such. To my mind, this is tantamount to asking, "if I'm hearing you right, then this conventional line of thinking would be wrong. Did I hear you wrong? If not, then what makes this conventional wisdom wrong in this case?"

That probably didn't make enough sense. Let me try again. No small part of the problem is, Talakeal's players (largely incorrectly) assign "wrong-minded" motivations to his decisions, rendering them unable to trust him. For Talakeal to build trust, he (probably / IMO) needs to consistently use one form of, uh, understandable / followable, transparent logic to guide his decisions.

This is why many people - including myself (albeit perhaps in a previous thread) - have advised Talakeal to run a published module: because it moves many of those decisions out of Talakeal's hands. The players cannot blame him for choices that he did not make.

When there's less blame flying around, they might be able to have more productive conversations about the direction the game should go.

However, Talakeal had firmly stated that such creative dearth is not to his liking - long-term, he'll want to build things. For that to be productive, he needs an underlying philosophy to guide his decisions - one different from the one he has been using.

Thus, perhaps one of the most productive things we could do - for the midterm success of the process - is to discuss gaming mindsets vs Talakeal's table - both static, as it is, and how to grow the table.

This is part of what I was trying to say earlier when I said something about "making people like puzzles" - what I really meant was complicated, but more "how do you build trust, and what can you do at various steps along the way?'.

I think that Talakeal discussing underlying game philosophy is something that we should encourage, not shoot down.

I guess I am just getting frustrated at this point because the thread is coming off as "anti-homebrew". People are criticizing my monsters for doing things that published monsters do all the time (I am pretty sure atleast half of the monsters in the 3.5 MM would be labelled as "gotcha" by the criteria listed in this thread) and it really makes me sad as creativity and worldbuilding are the things I enjoy most about the hobby and all of these people telling me that the only solution is to strip it out are effectively killing all of my enjoyment for it.

Also, this thread is really highlighting the old CMD. Monsters need to have lots of random abilities to deal with the crazy stuff wizards pull off, and even the most convoluted monsters only have a fraction of the versatility and random powers that a PC magic user has.




I don't remember precisely, it was many months ago. But here is the description in my notes:

The bridge begins to shake and swing with heavy footfalls. You the party looks up to see a giant creature lumbering towards them, four times the height of a man. It is somewhat humanoid, with a hunched posture, shaggy malformed shoulders, and an almost comically oversized nose. It reminds Lina somewhat of a Goliath. It is clad in hides and holds a large sack in one hand and an uprooted tree in the other, which it swings before it in a sweeping motion.




Really confused about what you are talking about here. Are you referring to me saying that I will play monsters slightly dumber if the party is struggling months ago or to me saying that when I am designing an adventure I try and make it an appropriately challenging?

What does that have to do with consumables? And the issue wasn't me complaining about them not using consumables, it was the players complaining that they were spending money on healing potions, and I advised them that they should probably be a bit more proactive and by a variety of consumables that would make the fight easier beforehand, and was ignored.

Also not sure why a lack of information means you need a full rest after every encounter; virtually every dungeon ever has more than a few surprises in it, and unless you are metagaming to the hilt you aren't going to know what everything does in the dungeon. Adventuring is, by default, a risky profession, and, generally speaking, cowardly characters really shouldn't become adventurers in the first place.*

I am not totally dismissing this, you do have a point about the player's ability to judge difficulty, and I will work better to communicate it in the future.



*:The resting after every fight thing is really just Bob being a power-gamer and trying to game the system. He is playing the caster, and wants to be able to go nova and overshadow everyone every fight, and likewise he wants to be able to make money off of his unused spells, and so he wants to go back to town as often as possible to make gold. If I would let him he would just stay in town all day long casting wall of iron and fabricate until he was the richest man in the world.

Were I at your table, I would not have said, "how dumb of me not to realize that this ogre could have sneezed me off the cliff". Were the toxic distrust of your players to have left me surly, I may have followed up the session/encounter with, "how could we have known that the ogre could do that?".

Again, understand, I don't criticize your encounters *in a vacuum* - in fact, many of them sound like a lot of fun. But, that said, I do criticize your decision to use them with your group.

IMO, what you need to want is for your players to feel successful. They need to walk away from your session saying, "how smart of me to ask that village girl about the Ogre", not "Talakeal complains that we waste too much time, yet, even so, we never spend enough time to actually know anything about anything". Saying, "how smart of us to use our knowledge of the Ogre to deploy intelligently, and defeat such a challenging foe", rather than "Talakeal makes us rush blind into every encounter. And gives the monsters random powers to counter our tactics whether we do something smart to make the fight easier than he intended".

Also, as I apparently failed to quote, the focus should be on the *party*, and how cool they were to defeat the monster, rather than on the monster, and how cool it is.

BTW, I should have said something when I first saw it, but I heartily endorse the reflexive Knowledge checks. This is a good first step towards making them feel, not just that they can do something in your world, but that your world isn't just your whims - that it has substance even before it pulls "gotchas".

[kyoryu]

Also, in most cases (outside Tomb of Horrors, which was literally designed because a few players in Gary's game were complaining about it being too easy), the "gotcha" monsters were used rarely.

The fact that good recipes can use a small amount of salt in them doesn't mean that it's good idea to put large amounts of salt in anything.

As far as difficulty and knowledge, let's put it this way. Let's say that at the start of a day, the party has 100 "adventure points" in them - capacity in various ways.

If they can generally look at an encounter and reasonably estimate that it is about 20 points worth of capacity, and it will usually end up being in the 15-25 point range, then they can be fairly confident in their ability to go forward.

If they know that they can generally reasonably be able to retreat, that helps too.

If they know that they can't judge an encounter with any degree of accuracy, and that that 20 point encounter could be an 80 point encounter, and they will not be able to retreat, then the only sane strategy is to be as cautious as possible before entering an encounter.

Also, as far as "balanced" encounters go, I am actually a huge proponent of not having them. Have encounters. Let the players choose what they engage, and let them gather sufficient info to make reasonable choices, and have at least a reasonable chance of retreat (note early D&D rules about dropping food/treasure to escape). I'd get out of the business of "choosing" what the players encounter. If Area 1 has kobolds, and Area 2 has orcs, and Area 3 has ogres, let the players choose which area they go to, just make sure the rewards match the danger.

The last thing I'd say is again, it seems like you keep looking for various things to prove that what you did is "okay". "Well, there were gotcha monsters in 1e" or the like. I don't think this attitude is helping you. I think a more helpful attitude would be "is what I'm doing getting the result I want?" And I think it's reasonably clear that the answer is "no".

Again, understand, I don't criticize your encounters *in a vacuum* - in fact, many of them sound like a lot of fun. But, that said, I do criticize your decision to use them with your group.

Usage and presentation, for sure. There is nothing wrong really with any of these encounters as encounters. Why they were used, and how the information was presented (or not) is really the key here.

[Talakeal]

Also, in most cases (outside Tomb of Horrors, which was literally designed because a few players in Gary's game were complaining about it being too easy), the "gotcha" monsters were used rarely.

So, from this thread, I am seeing three categories of "gotcha" monsters:

1: Something that has an ability that is not telegraphed or consistent with its overall shtick.
2: Something that gets stronger when attacked in the wrong way.
3: Something that uses deception to turn what is normally cautious behavior against the party.

As I said previously, going through the 3.5 Monster Manual most monsters fall into one of those categories, so I don't think they are really rare.

For example, I just opened to two random pages and saw the Bullette and Harpy. The Bullette has a leaping attack which can snatch flyers out of the air, and the harpy has a mind controlling song power. I am a pretty big monster lore nerd, and even I didn't remember those abilities, and they seem totally random; why does a huge heavily armored burrower leap and why does a hideous had have a mind controlling song? Those are at least as much of an out of nowhere screw you as creating a giant with a gust of wind breath weapon.

As far as difficulty and knowledge, let's put it this way. Let's say that at the start of a day, the party has 100 "adventure points" in them - capacity in various ways.

If they can generally look at an encounter and reasonably estimate that it is about 20 points worth of capacity, and it will usually end up being in the 15-25 point range, then they can be fairly confident in their ability to go forward.

If they know that they can generally reasonably be able to retreat, that helps too.

If they know that they can't judge an encounter with any degree of accuracy, and that that 20 point encounter could be an 80 point encounter, and they will not be able to retreat, then the only sane strategy is to be as cautious as possible before entering an encounter.

I have been running games for decades, and this is the first time I have ever had this problem.

Keep in mind, I am not playing with PC death or HP as meat; and have removed any punishment for dying. Also, the PCs know what level range the dungeons are, and they do know that the dungeon as a whole has "100 adventure points" worth of monsters in it.

So essentially what happens is the players journey several weeks out into the wilderness to fight monsters, encounter some monsters, get spooked, go back to town, rest up for a few weeks, repeat. It doesn't really make any sense to me from either an in character or out of character perspective.

snip.

That's pretty close to what I was thinking, but not quite.

Brian wants me to tailor every encounter for the party. He wants me to metagame MORE when designing encounters, because he wants to feel like he is contributing to every fight. He doesn't like it when they fight an incorporeal monster that he can't hit, but he also doesn't like it when Bob turns incorporeal and solos the fight without him.

Bob, on the other hand, just wants to win, and looks for someone to blame when he loses.

As a result, I am making the penalty for losing less and less severe, to the point where failure is currently preferable to a narrow victory from a mechanical perspective, and Bob has started to notice this and complain when I don't let the party return to town for a full rest after every fight.

The real problem is that the two other players are starting to come around to Bob's way of thinking; one of them has started blaming me for her failures and talking like I am out to get her, and the other wants to return to town mid dungeon, although he can't quite articulate why.

[NNescio]

[snip]

So everything is Bob's fault.

[Talakeal]

As far as difficulty and knowledge, let's put it this way. Let's say that at the start of a day, the party has 100 "adventure points" in them - capacity in various ways.

If they can generally look at an encounter and reasonably estimate that it is about 20 points worth of capacity, and it will usually end up being in the 15-25 point range, then they can be fairly confident in their ability to go forward.

If they know that they can generally reasonably be able to retreat, that helps too.

If they know that they can't judge an encounter with any degree of accuracy, and that that 20 point encounter could be an 80 point encounter, and they will not be able to retreat, then the only sane strategy is to be as cautious as possible before entering an encounter.

Also, I think you are overestimating the power of knowledge a bit. The game is already plenty uncertain, and I would wager that this pales in comparison to the uncertainty generated by dice, and I would hazard a guess that the monster's initiative roll often has more impact on a fight than even playing with completely open stat-blocks ever would for the vast majority of monsters.

So everything is Bob's fault.

Can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not.

While I do think that Bob contributes more to the groups problems than any single other player, including myself, but I do not think the majority of the table's problems are Bob's fault or that anyone, again including myself, are without blame.

[Quertus]

Usage and presentation, for sure. There is nothing wrong really with any of these encounters as encounters. Why they were used, and how the information was presented (or not) is really the key here.

Hmmm… so, we need to evaluate content, motivation, and presentation?

While I do think that Bob contributes more to the groups problems than any single other player, including myself, but I do not think the majority of the table's problems are Bob's fault or that anyone, again including myself, are without blame.

I want to join the chorus on the "fault" front. Now, don't get me wrong - I'm a fan of blame, in general. In order to fix a problem, the first step is to realize that there *is* a problem, and the second step is to determine *what* the problem is. That's blame, plain and simple. But, for the issues you've been having, even I think that "fault" is a less useful tool / mindset than, say, "conflicting styles / expectations".

I think that it would be more valuable for you to put away any notion of "fault" for now. Later, once you have proper experiments and gentleman's agreements, you (and they) can point to violations of the terms of the game, and assign fault. But, currently? No, y'all are talking / gaming past each other, and talking or even thinking in terms of "fault" will largely just be toxic, without any meaningful benefit. If you ask me, y'all really need to be on the same page in order to assign much fault beyond fault for not being on the same page.

[zinycor]

Am pretty sure that if you kick Bob out of your group, your group will at least be tolerable. Guy is amazingly toxic to you and the other players.

If you choose to play with such a player at your table, you have to make huge compromises, so it can get to eventually, and hopefully be a working table... Now... even if you do everything people are advising, to the best of your ability... I suspect it won't solve the problem, your problem is that Bob is a toxic player, kick him out.

Now, if you don't want to... talk to him, be honest and open with him regarding your feelings and thoughts on his behaviour. Again, if that doesn't work, kick him out of your table...

[patchyman]

Now, if you don't want to... talk to him, be honest and open with him regarding your feelings and thoughts on his behaviour. Again, if that doesn't work, kick him out of your table...

Even if you don’t kick Bob out, you need to lay down some ground rules for his continuing to play.

Your players don’t like TPKs. This is hurting your group as a whole and your relationship with your players. As long as a player can leave the game in the middle of a session and take his PC with him, TPKs are more likely, which makes everyone unhappy.

[Segev]

Also, I think you are overestimating the power of knowledge a bit. The game is already plenty uncertain, and I would wager that this pales in comparison to the uncertainty generated by dice, and I would hazard a guess that the monster's initiative roll often has more impact on a fight than even playing with completely open stat-blocks ever would for the vast majority of monsters.

You're missing the point of information. It isn't the power of it (though you're understimating it severely, I think). It's the agency it grants.

If they go into the fight with the sneeze-ogre knowing that it has a breath attack that can disrupt fliers and gasseous forms (or at least knowing it has a powerful wind attack, and extrapolate from there), then they have agency to act on that information. It can inform their tactical choices.

If they go into the fight seeing a bruiser monster they think they're clever to simply bypass with flight, only for it to blow them off-course and otherwise make them feel foolish for having tried that and been mocked by the failure (again, in their own minds), then they feel cheated. They had no way of knowing it would do that, unless they simply metagamed, "Talekeal won't let us bypass his brute fight, so we shouldn't fly or try anything that would let us do anything but maximize damage against it as fast as possible."

Again, in their heads, that's what they think happened: they tried to skip your fight, so they got punished by an arbitrary power.

If they'd known about the wind-gust attack, they could have taken it into account in their tactics. Maybe they try something different than they did. Maybe they take mitigating steps to bolster against wind before trying the same thing anyway.

But if they knew that the sneeze-ogre could blow dragons out of the sky (or somesuch), then they know to expect something like that. if they try gaseous form anyway, they still have to acknowledge, "Well, we knew it could do that, so I guess we goofed up."

But if they don't know about it, they can't change their behavior to act on it. So when it springs on them, they feel like you changed things to screw them over. To punish them for not playing how (they think, in retrospect) you wanted them to.

[Gallowglass]

The bridge begins to shake and swing with heavy footfalls. You the party looks up to see a giant creature lumbering towards them, four times the height of a man. It is somewhat humanoid, with a hunched posture, shaggy malformed shoulders, and an almost comically oversized nose. It reminds Lina somewhat of a Goliath. It is clad in hides and holds a large sack in one hand and an uprooted tree in the other, which it swings before it in a sweeping motion.

I really hope the Ogre called out "Nosebody gets past me!" as he rumbled across the bridge.

[NichG]

I strongly agree with the part that I bolded.

In fact, I so strongly agree, and think that it's so important, I'll say it again: I strongly agree with the part that I bolded.

That said, I disagree with most of the rest of what you said. Hear me out.

Talakeal needs *reasons* for the decisions that he is making. He is making an "appeal to authority" or an "appeal to tradition" or some such. To my mind, this is tantamount to asking, "if I'm hearing you right, then this conventional line of thinking would be wrong. Did I hear you wrong? If not, then what makes this conventional wisdom wrong in this case?"

That probably didn't make enough sense. Let me try again. No small part of the problem is, Talakeal's players (largely incorrectly) assign "wrong-minded" motivations to his decisions, rendering them unable to trust him. For Talakeal to build trust, he (probably / IMO) needs to consistently use one form of, uh, understandable / followable, transparent logic to guide his decisions.

This is why many people - including myself (albeit perhaps in a previous thread) - have advised Talakeal to run a published module: because it moves many of those decisions out of Talakeal's hands. The players cannot blame him for choices that he did not make.

When there's less blame flying around, they might be able to have more productive conversations about the direction the game should go.

However, Talakeal had firmly stated that such creative dearth is not to his liking - long-term, he'll want to build things. For that to be productive, he needs an underlying philosophy to guide his decisions - one different from the one he has been using.

Thus, perhaps one of the most productive things we could do - for the midterm success of the process - is to discuss gaming mindsets vs Talakeal's table - both static, as it is, and how to grow the table.

This is part of what I was trying to say earlier when I said something about "making people like puzzles" - what I really meant was complicated, but more "how do you build trust, and what can you do at various steps along the way?'.

I think that Talakeal discussing underlying game philosophy is something that we should encourage, not shoot down.

I might agree in another context, but in this case, the issue isn't one of broad gaming philosophy or general wisdom. Other posters have explained the problem ad nauseum - the things Talakeal wants to do require trust, which Talakeal does not have from their players. Note that this isn't a problem of abstract gaming philosophy or 'running things incorrectly in some general sense', this is a specific problem regarding the toxic relationship between Talakeal and the specific players they're playing with.

This isn't 'Talakeal isn't being transparent' or 'Talakeal is assigning incorrect motivations' - from this discussion, the Traps thread, and the previous thread about game economy, Talakeal is outright ignoring the preferences of their players because they conflict with the game they want to run. At the core, they don't trust Talakeal because their input to the table is being disregarded.

So moving the conversation to broad philosophical strokes is running away from the core of the real problem. It's not about the gaming philosophy. It's about basic social behavior. Making as if it were about philosophy is enabling the problematic behavior.

I think that Talakeal can, from the current situation, at best have one of three things:

- Gaming with these people where the whining and personal attacks are minimized, but which is very different than the kind of gaming Talakeal wants
- Gaming with these people where Talakeal gets to run what they want, but as a result is effectively ignoring and misinterpreting the players' requests, and receives passive aggressive attacks and dominance games in return
- Gaming with different people where Talakeal and the others are able to trust eachother, and Talakeal can run the kind of game they want.

There is no 'the players acquiesce to my whims and like my gaming style and cheerfully do as I think they should' here. Pretending that there is, if only Talakeal runs some kind of philosophically clean game, is I think doing a disservice to both them and their players.

To put it in fake mechanical terms, imagine everything that you do as a DM has a minimum trust level associated with it. Above that score, it's 'free' or maybe produces a bit of trust or costs a bit of trust depending on how it plays out.. Below that score, it reduces trust by a significant amount no matter what. Even good gaming experiences have a minimum trust level (perhaps the minimum is negative), below which people will see it just as an attempt to manipulate them or bribe them or whatever.

Standard gaming stuff like having an NPC make requests, setting the scene, etc assumes a trust score of at least +0. Tricksy stuff, having players experience setbacks, surprises, etc requires a trust score of +10. Standard fare of 'bad DM' stories requires +50. Giving out scads of treasure or randomly rewarding players requires -10. Basically robotically running something the players have asked for requires, say, a -50.

Based on reports, Talakeal's group with someone else DM-ing is at -60 - not functional for even one session under any circumstances.
Talakeal's group with Talakeal as DM is at -20. That's not unsalvageable perhaps, but it's very limiting.

Yes, other DMs do various things. In this circumstance, Talakeal cannot afford those things without lowering trust further - there is insufficient currency. Yes, having a group with +20 trust that can deal with fairytale ogres that sneeze people off bridges, challenging gameplay, etc would be nice, and may even be a better game objectively. But it cannot be run here and be successful.

The problem isn't that gotchas are fundamentally not permissible for a GM to use. The problem is that gotchas are bad for this group. Any sort of abstracted thing of 'this type of GMing is inherently good' or 'this type of GMing is inherently bad' will miss that point.

[Great Dragon]

So essentially what happens is the players journey several weeks out into the wilderness to fight monsters, encounter some monsters, get spooked, go back to town, rest up for a few weeks, repeat. It doesn't really make any sense to me from either an in character or out of character perspective.

That's an extremely old gaming style.

And unless that's the "Adventuring Norm", it never really makes sense.

That's pretty close to what I was thinking, but not quite.

Brian wants me to tailor every encounter for the party. He wants me to metagame MORE when designing encounters, because he wants to feel like he is contributing to every fight. He doesn't like it when they fight an incorporeal monster that he can't hit, but he also doesn't like it when Bob turns incorporeal and solos the fight without him.

Bob, on the other hand, just wants to win, and looks for someone to blame when he loses.

Ah. I had Bob and Brian reversed.

So, Brian (effectively) wanted the Walkthrough (including Encounter Maps, Monster Stats, and tactical advice) and color coded "challenge" bars (from WoW = green for easy, yellow for hard, and red for deadly) on Monsters with their Health Bar also hovering above thier heads?

As a result, I am making the penalty for losing less and less severe, to the point where failure is currently preferable to a narrow victory from a mechanical perspective, and Bob has started to notice this and complain when I don't let the party return to town for a full rest after every fight.

The real problem is that the two other players are starting to come around to Bob's way of thinking; one of them has started blaming me for her failures and talking like I am out to get her, and the other wants to return to town mid dungeon, although he can't quite articulate why.

I'm not in support of a Can't Lose/Fail game.
Failing is just as important as "Winning".
Failure can make some funny RP moments, and encourage Character Development.

Without even the chance of Failure, how much value does any Boss/BBEG Fight have?

As a Player, I might be able to tolerate Bob.

As a DM, I wouldn't tolerate Brian's desire to Know Everything, and using Meta information in Character.
I'd most likely tell him that if he wants to be The All Knowing Person, step up and be the DM.

But then Bob would most likely lose interest in my game (no auto wins): and Brian would hate my guts. I don't allow Meta IC, and if the PC wants to know something, they actually have to figure out what to do IC to get that information: Researching at a Library (some have requirements to get in); or finding the correct NPC to ask questions. Maybe going on Quests to find Lost Libraries, or earn that knowledge from the NPC.

Spoiler: I'm not sure

Show

There are a couple of things I can think of that might help. Perhaps Combining both.

1) Add more "free" Potions of Healing:
Something like 1d4 per PC per Treasure found.
(Regular Healing on Dungeon Levels 1-2, Greater for Levels 3-5, Superior for Levels 6-9, and Supreme for Level 10+)

2) Give the party an item that allows a Long Rest even while in the Wilderness or Dungeon.

In 3x - I created a Figurine that cast Leomund's Tiny Hut once a day.
It could hold up to ten people, up to Large Size.

For 5e, this would most likely be a Rare item, with Leomund's Secure Shelter being Very Rare, and Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion being Legendary.

Not a guaranteed fix, but might help with the "just started complianing" Players.

[OldTrees1]

I guess I am just getting frustrated at this point because the thread is coming off as "anti-homebrew". People are criticizing my monsters for doing things that published monsters do all the time (I am pretty sure atleast half of the monsters in the 3.5 MM would be labelled as "gotcha" by the criteria listed in this thread) and it really makes me sad as creativity and worldbuilding are the things I enjoy most about the hobby and all of these people telling me that the only solution is to strip it out are effectively killing all of my enjoyment for it.

Also, this thread is really highlighting the old CMD. Monsters need to have lots of random abilities to deal with the crazy stuff wizards pull off, and even the most convoluted monsters only have a fraction of the versatility and random powers that a PC magic user has.

Talakeal, we are trying to tell you how to get your players to trust you when you use Homebrewed creatures. Because currently you are not trusted enough for encounters like the sneeze ogre to be enjoyable to everyone involved. In order to so help you, the posters are:
1) Communicating to you what concerns the players have when a distrusted DM uses homebrew.
2) Teach you more communication skills to decrease the amount of distrust sowed.
3) Give you a temporary plan for how to regain trust. Once the trust is regained, then you can afford to run homebrewed encounters because the players would trust you to competent and fair.

So why are they doing that? Because they have all seen what TRUST can do. Most of us have seen and enjoyed homebrewed encounters or other playstyles that required a higher than initial level of trust. We can enjoy those playstyles from both the DM and PC perspective because we have groups that TRUST.

1) So the posters have described how "gotchas" feel to the players. They described how a player is faced with either trusting their concern or trusting the DM. If they trust you then they can let it go more often. If they distrust you they will have issues with you that can / have exploded.

2) You cited Bulettes as an example of a creature from the Monster Manual that you think is not telegraphed. I have usually seen both the leaping and burrowing signature abilities telegraphed before the encounter. Bulette lairs frequently have trails of disturbed earth similar to a large burrowing animal. Likewise some of those trails will start in the middle of the ground up several feet. As the PCs get nearer they might even seen the Bulettes moving around with their jumping and burrowing.

Please take a moment to think about that. Bulettes are trivial to telegraph and you listed them as not telegraphed. Perhaps you might want to take this as advice about communication rather than whatever defensive thing you are taking it as? Or maybe you like the feel of gotchas, in which case you need to earn even more trust before the players will be able to also enjoy those encounters despite the negative emotions (feelings of being cheated, railroaded, tricked OOC, etc). With enough trust the players will trust their reasons for trusting you over their immediate negative gut reactions to the encounter. But you need to plant & sow trust before you can harvest trust.

3) All the advice about temporarily not using homebrew & using modules is about getting you the trust you need for your preferred homebrewed interesting monsters playstyle. The thread cannot be anti homebrew is we are trying to help you get a group that trusts your ability to homebrew.


Finally,
You keep talking as if we (the posters in the thread) are suggesting a permanent change. I don't understand why you keep using a misrepresentation of the advice. You know we have all been talking about a short term plan to allow you to build the trust you need for your normal playstyle. And yet you keep resorting to that misrepresentation. It continues to feel like you are only looking for an excuse to nothing. It continues to feel like you merely want to vent in an echo chamber rather than receive advice. If this is not your intended message: Then please stop signalling that.

[Kardwill]

and the harpy has a mind controlling song power. I am a pretty big monster lore nerd, and even I didn't remember those abilities, and they seem totally random; ... and why does a hideous had have a mind controlling song?

Just nitpicking here, but the D&D harpy is a mix of the greek harpy (filthy diseased bird-lady goons abducting people for the Furies) and the greek siren (ugly scary bird-ladiy maneaters, using their enchanting voice to draw people to their doom). The 2 monsters were pretty much identical in mythology, so I guess the game's designer simply made them one monster by mixing their abilities.

And on a practical note, even if the players are not mythology geeks, the singing attack of the harpy is pretty easy to foreshadow, making the combat scary instead of confusing :)

Again, Odyseus knew about the sirens' song beforehand, and he devised a (terribly risky) plan before he went against them. He didn't have to deal with a surprise mass-save roll taking out his entire crew during the first round of the encounter.

[Cluedrew]

For example, in combat I would say good team work would be something like the fighter draws the monster's attention, the rogue stabs it in the back, the wizard debuffs it, the cleric heals the fighter, and the bard gives everyone a bonus to their dice rolls.

But if you have an overspecialized character in the group they will either take out the monster solo or sit in the back doing nothing, which in my mind is the opposite of teamwork.

Or the party fighter solos combat while the scientist desperately packs up her gear containing the vital information with the help of the cleric's cult followers then the rogue guides everyone over dangerous terrain to a town where the bard pays for a doctor to heal the fighter.

That's what balance looks like in my campaigns and I enjoy it more. Its also non-fantasy so I replaced wizard with scientist.

For a gotcha to work, there has to be significant trust already, and they need to be rare

For gotcha's to work, you have to be OK with loosing to them. Because you will eventually end up on the loosing side and that should be fun too.

To Talakeal: Maybe the initial solutions being proposed aren't what you are looking for but if you want to keep playing with this group (and I can barely believe that you do) you should try re-inventing how you run this game. I don't know what that looks like but start coaming your memories for any moment everyone/most people at the table enjoyed. What are they? The Playground community can present a lot of ideas but I feel this would speed things up a lot.

[zinycor]

One thing that should be acknowledged is that the main problem here is not the way you run your games, but that the group is absolutely dysfunctional, therefore, you should either leave that group, eliminate the dysfunctional elements in the group or run a game in such a way that diminishes the chances of problematic situations happening.

[Talakeal]

So, I had a talk with some of my players, and I think the problem is just a fundamental difference in what we want out of gaming.

AFAICT they want to use gaming as an outlet for self esteem issues, and mostly enjoy the power fantasy aspects and, more importantly, to get the illusion of control in their lives.

As a result, they just want everything to be easy and straightforward.

From my perspective, a story without surprises, tension, challenge, or drama is incredibly boring and not really worth telling; I was straining my brain to think up any movie, book, or TV episode where everything goes off without a hitch exactly as planned for the protagonists and I couldn't do it, it just seems so boring.

I tried sharing my viewpoint with my players, but they dismissed that as saying that in a movie you know it is going to come out all right in the end, RPGs don't have that level of security so the tension is scary instead of fun.


Also, they seem to have a really weird idea about the relationship between players and DMs. Basically, as far as I can understand it, they think the DMs job is to kill the player characters but give the illusion of being fair and balanced, so the DM is always looking for the opportunity to trick the players into killing themselves with what appears to be a reasonable challenge so they can achieve their nefarious goals while looking innocent.


So, in the end, I think we just have fundamentally different ideas about what gaming is. After everyone is back I am going to wrap up my campaign and then I think I am going to let someone else take up the screen for a long long time and find a new group for when I decide to DM again.

[The Glyphstone]

Reasonable discussion and an exchange of opinions, with a moderately positive outcome? Are you sure you didn't trip and fall into a portal to Not-Bizarro World, and you'll wake up in your normal dimension tomorrow?

[Koo Rehtorb]

and find a new group for when I decide to DM again.

Finally sanity prevails.

[zinycor]

Congrats on bringing this situation to a close. Hopefully you get a better group next time

[Great Dragon]

So, in the end, I think we just have fundamentally different ideas about what gaming is. After everyone is back I am going to wrap up my campaign and then I think I am going to let someone else take up the screen for a long long time and find a new group for when I decide to DM again.

That sounds like a really good plan.
Let someone else DM the Dysfunctional Group once your Campaign is done.
Just make and play what you want, and try to have fun.

Also, maybe when you find a new group, start with standard D&D and only slightly modified modules.

Find out what their Goals are in playing (Mostly OoC, but also IC), and work to build Trust with the group.

After a few sessions - Throw a Classic Gotcha Monster (For low levels - Mimic as a Chest is the most obvious to the majority of Players) at them and see how they react.

If all goes well - then pitch your Homebrewed World, and see if they bite.

[Koo Rehtorb]

If one interesting thing came out of this thread for me it's people putting words/mechanics to this whole trust thing. I didn't really have a way to describe how I'm much more willing to tolerate stuff like house rules from people I know well than I am from random strangers before.

[Quertus]

I might agree in another context, but in this case, the issue isn't one of broad gaming philosophy or general wisdom. Other posters have explained the problem ad nauseum - the things Talakeal wants to do require trust, which Talakeal does not have from their players. Note that this isn't a problem of abstract gaming philosophy or 'running things incorrectly in some general sense', this is a specific problem regarding the toxic relationship between Talakeal and the specific players they're playing with.

This isn't 'Talakeal isn't being transparent' or 'Talakeal is assigning incorrect motivations' - from this discussion, the Traps thread, and the previous thread about game economy, Talakeal is outright ignoring the preferences of their players because they conflict with the game they want to run. At the core, they don't trust Talakeal because their input to the table is being disregarded.

So moving the conversation to broad philosophical strokes is running away from the core of the real problem. It's not about the gaming philosophy. It's about basic social behavior. Making as if it were about philosophy is enabling the problematic behavior.

I think that Talakeal can, from the current situation, at best have one of three things:

- Gaming with these people where the whining and personal attacks are minimized, but which is very different than the kind of gaming Talakeal wants
- Gaming with these people where Talakeal gets to run what they want, but as a result is effectively ignoring and misinterpreting the players' requests, and receives passive aggressive attacks and dominance games in return
- Gaming with different people where Talakeal and the others are able to trust eachother, and Talakeal can run the kind of game they want.

There is no 'the players acquiesce to my whims and like my gaming style and cheerfully do as I think they should' here. Pretending that there is, if only Talakeal runs some kind of philosophically clean game, is I think doing a disservice to both them and their players.

To put it in fake mechanical terms, imagine everything that you do as a DM has a minimum trust level associated with it. Above that score, it's 'free' or maybe produces a bit of trust or costs a bit of trust depending on how it plays out.. Below that score, it reduces trust by a significant amount no matter what. Even good gaming experiences have a minimum trust level (perhaps the minimum is negative), below which people will see it just as an attempt to manipulate them or bribe them or whatever.

Standard gaming stuff like having an NPC make requests, setting the scene, etc assumes a trust score of at least +0. Tricksy stuff, having players experience setbacks, surprises, etc requires a trust score of +10. Standard fare of 'bad DM' stories requires +50. Giving out scads of treasure or randomly rewarding players requires -10. Basically robotically running something the players have asked for requires, say, a -50.

Based on reports, Talakeal's group with someone else DM-ing is at -60 - not functional for even one session under any circumstances.
Talakeal's group with Talakeal as DM is at -20. That's not unsalvageable perhaps, but it's very limiting.

Yes, other DMs do various things. In this circumstance, Talakeal cannot afford those things without lowering trust further - there is insufficient currency. Yes, having a group with +20 trust that can deal with fairytale ogres that sneeze people off bridges, challenging gameplay, etc would be nice, and may even be a better game objectively. But it cannot be run here and be successful.

The problem isn't that gotchas are fundamentally not permissible for a GM to use. The problem is that gotchas are bad for this group. Any sort of abstracted thing of 'this type of GMing is inherently good' or 'this type of GMing is inherently bad' will miss that point.

So (I think) we agree about the first steps - that Talakeal would need to run something completely different from what he has been doing, to start to (re)build trust.

Some people then say that the second step is for Talakeal to run business as normal. You even have a trichotomy of "bad for Talakeal" / "bad for his players" / ”new group".

I am trying to present a fourth option - one I consider superior to at least the first two on your list. Let's call it "educated compromise".

I know I won't say this well, but I trust the Playground to try to make sense of what I'm saying anyway.

So, first step, Talakeal runs a game - say, a module straight from the book - to start to rebuild trust. Fine. But then what? How does he choose between an Ogre, straight from the book, and a fairytale Ogre with foreshadowing, and the virtually no foreshadowing fairytale Ogre that he used? What rules does he use in making those choices, and how does he communicate that to the players so as not to lose trust?

But, equally important, IMO, what baby steps does he take on the way there? What things can he test to see if he and his players enjoy certain types of authorial creativity?

So, for example, (I wouldn't) run a module straight, then run a module changed to dovetail it into the first module, then run a module heavily changed both to dovetail into the preceding module *and* to foreshadow the upcoming homebrew, and then run that homebrew, and then run a homebrew that had no such foreshadowing.

The dials I'd turn? I'm more likely to start by running monsters straight out of the books. Then run monsters modified by the books (extra HD, class levels, gear, templates, etc), at various levels of foreshadowing. Then add in a few "low CR" homebrew monsters, at various levels of foreshadowing.

In parallel with that, I'd be working with the players to discuss how to win - how to gather information, how to do research, how to talk to NPCs. But this isn't just me teaching - this is also me *asking* them how *they* would like to know what the monsters can do. Give examples (different levels of foreshadowing, ancient texts, NPCs, even knowledge checks), and then ask the players what they like.

But that scarcely touches on game design philosophy. Yet. At least, not obviously.

See, Talakeal once made a game "like Goonies". Except, it was only "like Goonies" in Talakeal's mind - when the Playground looked at it, the response was generally "that requires the *opposite* of the Goonies mindset". When we talk about "gotcha" monsters, Talakeal's instinct is to compare our logic with existing monsters. When we talk about the Ogre, Talakeal's instinct is to talk about Gamist reasoning, and discuss old articles he's read.

These are the perfect kinds of things to use to discuss gaming style, and to help set expectations.

Now, part of the problem is, Talakeal needs to be prepared to fail. A lot. He needs to be ready for "that's not what Goonies means", for "PCs needing ways to deal with flying foes is not the same as monsters needing to be able to deal with flying foes".

It's the same reasoning for why I appreciate/advocate one-shots: when I say that I want to run a "political" game, I may think that I've communicated something. But, when one player shows up expecting to talk to NPCs, a second prepared to backstab the party, and a third only wants to play matchmaker? That's how I realize that we need to hammer out just what we mean by these words.

What I'm suggesting is, Talakeal can try building encounters / one-shots with different motivations: make one with by-the-books monsters; make one with Gamist game balance logic; make one as a custom puzzle monster (low threat, optional content); make one a custom puzzle bonus monster (easier to fight if you figure out the puzzle, but still beatable otherwise); one custom tactical monster (hand the players the stat block before the encounter); one nostalgia monster (big nose 2 - the return of the fairytale Ogre). Run those encounters, explain them, get feedback.

What I'm suggesting is, Talakeal can make one Gamist challenge encounter, one CaS "suddenly, monsters" encounter, one CaW "all the time in the world to plan to take this encounter from "unbeatable" to… whatever difficulty the players finally decide to take it at. One "run it straight" encounter, one "modify the tactics to keep the difficulty" encounter, one "fudge the dice to keep the difficulty" encounter. Then discuss with the players what they liked / disliked, and why.

What I'm saying is, there are so many paths Talakeal could take, so many possible baby steps along the way. Leaping straight back to where he was could lose him the trust he built, and we don't all agree which path(s) he should take. But, if Talakeal has the tools and the vocabulary, he can test those paths for himself.

Yes, Talakeal should make some drastic changes in the short term. But I feel that these discussions of reasons why to do things will help in the midterm.

[OldTrees1]

So, I had a talk with some of my players, and I think the problem is just a fundamental difference in what we want out of gaming.

Yeah, that writing was on the wall for a long time now.

AFAICT they want to use gaming as an outlet for self esteem issues, and mostly enjoy the power fantasy aspects and, more importantly, to get the illusion of control in their lives.

As a result, they just want everything to be easy and straightforward.

From my perspective, a story without surprises, tension, challenge, or drama is incredibly boring and not really worth telling; I was straining my brain to think up any movie, book, or TV episode where everything goes off without a hitch exactly as planned for the protagonists and I couldn't do it, it just seems so boring.

I tried sharing my viewpoint with my players, but they dismissed that as saying that in a movie you know it is going to come out all right in the end, RPGs don't have that level of security so the tension is scary instead of fun.

Yeah some preferred playstyles do not have much overlap.

Also, they seem to have a really weird idea about the relationship between players and DMs. Basically, as far as I can understand it, they think the DMs job is to kill the player characters but give the illusion of being fair and balanced, so the DM is always looking for the opportunity to trick the players into killing themselves with what appears to be a reasonable challenge so they can achieve their nefarious goals while looking innocent.

Yikes. We knew they were way less trusting than normal (even before the loop) but I did not expect they expected the DM to be "nefarious ... while looking innocent".

So, in the end, I think we just have fundamentally different ideas about what gaming is. After everyone is back I am going to wrap up my campaign and then I think I am going to let someone else take up the screen for a long long time and find a new group for when I decide to DM again.

I want to say "Finally" but I understand this is a bittersweet moment right now. I expect your next group you DM for will have a playstyle that overlaps more with your own.

[NichG]

I think this is a consistent understanding with the previously described behavior, and a healthy step to have it out there and explicitly recognized. I hope you find some players compatible with your style!

[Cluedrew]

So, in the end, I think we just have fundamentally different ideas about what gaming is. After everyone is back I am going to wrap up my campaign and then I think I am going to let someone else take up the screen for a long long time and find a new group for when I decide to DM again.

I am not in the slightest surprised about their opinions on role-playing. Well a few of the details were surprising, but not like the fact that you could have this conversation and resolve the situation.

Play-style mismatch is a real thing and not just a polite way to say "you are bad people who like bad games". My partner in homebrew runs games that I rarely join because the style & tone usually don't fit. And this is between two people who like the same sorts of systems.

Hope things go well for you in the future.

Reasonable discussion and an exchange of opinions, with a moderately positive outcome? Are you sure you didn't trip and fall into a portal to Not-Bizarro World, and you'll wake up in your normal dimension tomorrow?

I hope not, as far as I can tell this is the second major step he has taken to "leaving" bizarre world.

[kyoryu]

AFAICT they want to use gaming as an outlet for self esteem issues, and mostly enjoy the power fantasy aspects and, more importantly, to get the illusion of control in their lives.

As a result, they just want everything to be easy and straightforward.

From my perspective, a story without surprises, tension, challenge, or drama is incredibly boring and not really worth telling; I was straining my brain to think up any movie, book, or TV episode where everything goes off without a hitch exactly as planned for the protagonists and I couldn't do it, it just seems so boring.

I tried sharing my viewpoint with my players, but they dismissed that as saying that in a movie you know it is going to come out all right in the end, RPGs don't have that level of security so the tension is scary instead of fun.

So, that's not incompatible, really.

I mean, that's pretty close to how most of my Fate games end up. My PCs lose all the time. They also know, at least short term, what "losing" means for any given fight, and it's almost never "death". If death is on the line, they know it and know that they can back out of the fight at basically any time up until damage is rolled to escape it.

Also, Fate has mechanics where, basically, losing sets you up to win later, so even if you "lose" an encounter, you get something that helps you win the next ones.

So, for the sneeze ogre example, I'd probably say something like this:

"As you climb up to the top of the hill, you see a <insert ogre description>. You also see what appears to be mucus dripping from a number of the trees and rocks up there. As you look, the ogre lets out a huge sneeze that sends rocks flying away. Even at this distance, the force of it is enough to threaten to push you back. The ogre notices you and looks at you. 'Go away *sneeze*. I don't want visitors! Go away or I'll blow you right off of this hill!'"

Now, depending on the tone of the game, I might grit that up a bit, but I'm going with the "fairytale" vibe. The ogre's ability is telegraphed, and his intentions (knock them off) is made clear. It's pretty clear in this case that PC death isn't really what's likely to happen - if they lose, they get knocked off the hill.

This lets the players go forward with some trust in the situation and deal with the creature. There's still tension - will the players get past the ogre? Will they get knocked off? But the "surprise" of suddenly getting blown away is gone - which is okay to me, because it's the lamest type of tension, really.

So, you know, if you give them some reason to believe that in the large scale the PCs will be okay, even if things don't go their way, maybe you can get away with ratcheting up the difficulty a bit on the smaller scale.

[Talakeal]

So, another thing that came up during my talk with the players.

They are still really mad at me for putting an "unbeatable" monster in their way, referring to the guy who splits when killed.

I tried to explain to them that it wasn't unbeatable, with slightly different dice rolls or tactics they would have one, twice it just barely passed a save vs an incapacitating effect, and if they had chosen to tie it up when it was stunned that would have been the end of it, and even if they had lacked the resources, they did go back to town and could have purchased manacles or had the alchemist make some tranquilizers to coat their weapons and made quick work of it.

To which they replied that I was misunderstanding them; it was unbeatable for them because they would never consider restraining a foe rather than killing it, either in or out of character, to the point where when I flat out told them it couldn't be killed they assumed I was deliberately trying to trick them and tried to find a way to kill it anyway.

Which got me thinking; how much is the DM really culpable for making (or running in the case of a module) encounters that specific characters will struggle with because of self imposed personality quirks?

Which leads into the bigger topic, if a player intentionally builds their PC with a weakness, is the DM obligated to always avoid that weakness? And if so, how is it a weakness at all?

As I said upthread, every build guide recommends that martial characters have ways to deal with flying and incorporeal foes, but if the party chooses not to, does that mean that all of the flying and incorporeal creatures in the MM are now off limits?



Now, believe it or not, I am normally on the other side of this issue. My signature PC is stubborn as a rock, and quite often I beat my ahead against a problem when I know my approach is the wrong one.

Heck, last year I had a long thread about a game that ended in the first session because the DM had an NPC who was massively above my level threaten to kill me if I didn't violate my alignment abd work for him, and I chose to try and fight him and die rather than acquiesce. But I didn't think to blame the DM for it, it was just a frustrating case of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, that PC simply could not survive that scenario, and neither the DM nor the player knew that going into it.

So, that's not incompatible, really.

I mean, that's pretty close to how most of my Fate games end up. My PCs lose all the time. They also know, at least short term, what "losing" means for any given fight, and it's almost never "death". If death is on the line, they know it and know that they can back out of the fight at basically any time up until damage is rolled to escape it.

Also, Fate has mechanics where, basically, losing sets you up to win later, so even if you "lose" an encounter, you get something that helps you win the next ones.

So, for the sneeze ogre example, I'd probably say something like this:

"As you climb up to the top of the hill, you see a <insert ogre description>. You also see what appears to be mucus dripping from a number of the trees and rocks up there. As you look, the ogre lets out a huge sneeze that sends rocks flying away. Even at this distance, the force of it is enough to threaten to push you back. The ogre notices you and looks at you. 'Go away *sneeze*. I don't want visitors! Go away or I'll blow you right off of this hill!'"

Now, depending on the tone of the game, I might grit that up a bit, but I'm going with the "fairytale" vibe. The ogre's ability is telegraphed, and his intentions (knock them off) is made clear. It's pretty clear in this case that PC death isn't really what's likely to happen - if they lose, they get knocked off the hill.

This lets the players go forward with some trust in the situation and deal with the creature. There's still tension - will the players get past the ogre? Will they get knocked off? But the "surprise" of suddenly getting blown away is gone - which is okay to me, because it's the lamest type of tension, really.

So, you know, if you give them some reason to believe that in the large scale the PCs will be okay, even if things don't go their way, maybe you can get away with ratcheting up the difficulty a bit on the smaller scale.

I agree, that particular example is pretty lame as far as surprises go.

In general though, the tension of not knowing what something is or where it came from can be pretty effective, and part of that is giving it weird unexpected powers; for example if you were fighting some far-realm infected kobolds with ants for blood, it is a lot more effective to simply have them launch acidic spines in combat than to have some guy yell "watch out! They spit acid!" while leaving town; basic show don't tell. Mechanically it isn't really a screw job, not any more so than them picking up rocks and chucking them anyway, but it can really up the creep factor.

Likewise, defensive abilities are a lot more effective at ramping up tension, when you hit the monster with your best shot and it just gets right back up.

But neither of those are common things, they should only happen a couple of times in a campaign, but it would be nice to be able to have them as tools in my arsenal.

But the real issue is that they actively told me they don't want drama, tension, surprises, or challenge in the game. They want to feel good and feel in control the whole time, winning from start to finish, where they have clear and easily achievable goals and everything always goes according to plan, which isn't the sort of game that could hold my interest. Also, Bob and Brian have fundamentally incompatible views of what it means to win, Brian wants combat as sport and wants everyone to contribute, while Bob wants combat as war, where he can find a way to trivialize the encounter by himself and make his foes helpless.

I want to say "Finally" but I understand this is a bittersweet moment right now. I expect your next group you DM for will have a playstyle that overlaps more with your own.

Nothing sweet about it, I am actually feeling really depressed about the whole affair.

[Pelle]

Also, they seem to have a really weird idea about the relationship between players and DMs. Basically, as far as I can understand it, they think the DMs job is to kill the player characters but give the illusion of being fair and balanced, so the DM is always looking for the opportunity to trick the players into killing themselves with what appears to be a reasonable challenge so they can achieve their nefarious goals while looking innocent.

Is that how the players think it actually is (in practice), or is it how they want it to be ideally (how it should be)? If the former, that's at least an understandable confusion, but the latter sounds messed up...

Which leads into the bigger topic, if a player intentionally builds their PC with a weakness, is the DM obligated to always avoid that weakness?

That depends entirely what your group wants out of the game. Personally, no the DM is not obligated to avoid that weakness (since I don't greatly mind failures), but our opinions hardly matter for your players.

[Talakeal]

Is that how the players think it actually is (in practice), or is it how they want it to be ideally (how it should be)? If the former, that's at least an understandable confusion, but the latter sounds messed up...




That depends entirely what your group wants out of the game. Personally, no the DM is not obligated to avoid that weakness (since I don't greatly mind failures), but our opinions hardly matter for your players.

How it is. I think, we kind of ran out of time to talk before they could elaborate and I was curious about the specifics.


At this point I am not sure if anything can reconcile my differences with this group; I am more pondering about RPG theory in general.