You Can, But You Really Can't

[NichG]

I think what rubs me the wrong way is the DM prescribing what the player should do. Something about that seems off.

Lets say that instead of the improvised action, after being told they should just attack, the OP had said 'fine, I drink a potion of Fly'. Do you feel from this example like the DM would have said 'no, you should just attack it'? If something like that happened, yeah, I'd say that's pretty bad.

[Quertus]

I randomly lost part of this post, so apologies if I stop in mid sentence anywhere, or seem even less coherent than usual.

@Vahnavoi - Dude, you've been killing it lately! Kudos on the 4-point explanation, it very clearly lays out the primary causes of related incidents.

3 or 4 I guess? The reason why I'd rate it below Kyoryu's suggestions to me is, that's likely to lead to table debate (like, immediately, you got icefractal's 'but actually' as almost a knee jerk argument).

Hahaha - well, that answers one difference between us: "sparking a table debate" rates it an automatic "10" in my books. There's absolutely nothing better in an RPG than a good table debate. Most RPG sessions at best leave the fantasy world and its inhabitants in a better state; a table debate can leave this world and its inhabitants in a better state. 10/10, would highly recommend.

Most birds couldn't fly with a weight attached to one wing, even if it's a weight they could carry in their talons. You're not hooking a moving semi-truck, you're screwing with the wheels of a stationary semi-truck so it won't be able to start moving.

Heck, I doubt I could run at anywhere near full speed if I had a small lawn gnome attached to one of my legs with a fish hook - hobble, more like.

Ah, that makes more sense than what I read. Being an ignoramus in the field of bird flight mechanics, I'd definitely have to punt this to the group to evaluate, with a side of "Dragon flight is magical - your physics may not apply the way you expect" with a reference back to tractor trailers.

Clarification is perhaps warranted. I don't gm d&d any more, I barely play it these days. I was tired of fighting the sit-n-poke padded hp bloat combat it instills in players and neither 4th nor 5th eds really did anything to change it. There's other stuff too but the d&d combat system makes me never do stunt type stuff in d&d combat.

I'm confused - wouldn't padded sumo combat be an optimal time to attempt stunts?

That is, when every action is vital, I'd be disinclined to waste them; however, when my options are "chip some small percentage towards victory" vs "potentially change the landscape of the battlefield", suddenly it's a whole lot more appealing. There's a reason why BFC has such a good rep around here.

So why are your experiences and inclination the opposite of mine?

I'm holding constant here that the GM has 1. Already decided that this won't work (for whatever reason - realism, game balance, they feel the player has been holding up game, whatever - we don't really know from the OP) and 2. Wants the game to move on.

Ah. I'm not making that assumption / taking that as a given / whatever. I think that explains why I disagree with some of what you said in this thread.

It's better than the OP's GM because it communicates an explanation. But it does so in a way that could be taken as 'the challenge here is convince me' which can bog down play or feel unfair when in the end you don't agree with whatever argument the player follows up with but don't convince them either. Whereas a direct 'my ruling is going to be that it will not work' is more brusque perhaps, but it's less ambiguous.

Here, OTOH, we seem to have a fundamental philosophical disagreement.

It is my belief that the primary role of the GM is communication, is making and keeping the game state in sync, in providing the interface between the game world and the players, in allowing the players to make reasonable decisions based on their characters' knowledge. (yes, that's all 1 thing)

This falls under that primary responsibility.

Now, sure, I've gamed with plenty of idiots, whose intuition betrayed them and/or couldn't grok concepts like the interaction between dragon weight and boat buoyancy, or human psychology and what you can tell about a customer who asks, "how much is this?", or between dragon wings and flight, or any number of other things. And I've been that idiot from time to time.

It is the GM's primary responsibility to catch these errors, and the table's responsibility to either explain things to the ignoramus, or at least to pull out the clue-by-fours and make sure that the ignoramus knows that they're an ignoramus, in the event that they are simply incapable of understanding the situation, no matter how many times and ways the group tries to beat it into their head.

ABSOLUTELY the tone of my comment is "convince me". We're in a potential desync situation here, we need to use our words and get back in sync.

And I take GMs who take the stance, "I'm an idiot, and I'm gonna do this thing wrong and nonsensical, and leave us in an irreconcilable game state desync" to deserve a very negative rating on their handling of such a situation. It erodes the fundamental ability of the player to meaningfully interact with the game environment, to take actions from the PoV of their character. [To reference another thread, it would be as if you were making Runes, one of which had an effect based on several factors including the magnetic properties of the metal / substance it was inscribed upon, you inscribed it in Tungsten, the GM didn't know the magnetic properties of Tungsten, didn't care, and made a random ruling on what the rune did based on their ignorant misunderstanding of Tungsten. Wouldn't that have ruined the coolness of experimenting with Runes for you? Didn't you say that the value of the Exploration (my word) of Runes required GM consistency?]

In what way do you view this differently than I do?

(I don't know if it comes across in the tone of my writing, but I'm actually shivering in excitement at the prospect I might learn something cool today.)

It's kind of fiddly because we don't know the why. Like, if this is D&D I would probably think internally something like - grappling is it's own, complex thing. Grappling with a reach weapon ... can you even do that with like a whip or something (turns out no)? To make this ruling in a way that doesn't make bad precedent -I'd have to stop game for 10 minutes and look stuff up, which sucks for everyone else at the table. Like why would you ever risk AoOs or take Improved Grapple or risk having a grapple turned on you or all of that stuff if you just have to tag someone with a grappling hook.

If that was my thought process but I said the realism argument, then that's an outright error - minus 1 or 2 or something like that.

I like the "bad precedent" comment, and have made and accepted such arguments many times in my gaming... career? tenure? what word goes here?

Still, a "grappling hook" is meant to perform a "ranged grapple" of sorts - that's kidna its only function ("You had ONE JOB!"), and it's right there in the name: Grappling Hook. I see this sparking an instantaneous (and silly!) table debate at many of my tables, where people propose universes in which grappling hooks can no longer stick to walls and such.

And how do thrown nets work? Do they use the grapple rules, modified, or their own subsystem?

But, yes, thinking one thing and saying another is bad. It just leads to people addressing what you said, then everyone getting upset at the desync between "that was a logical argument given what you said" and the irrational outcome.

There is such a thing as over-improvising, but if you find yourself as GM saying "just use the rules and stop trying stuff" then I think you're missing one of the major reasons people play tabletop RPGs - because they can actually try stuff they couldn't do in, for example, a video game.

That's why my approach to this situation is "go ahead, but once you see the drawbacks to your approach you'll probably see why people don't use the idea very often."

The existence of an "outside the box" is, indeed, the one big advantage RPGs have over some alternatives.

As for why ideas aren't used very often... well, some creative approaches - like smoke on bees - are common in some circles. So if the giant bees are established to just be bees, but bigger, I expect smoke to make them docile, and I expect undead not to suffer from smoke inhalation, and I expect the added undead and added strength from, say, contracting ursine lycanthropy to mean we can carry more honey back, and I expect the fact that we didn't need to kill the bees means we can turn this 1-shot windfall into a sweet, sticky goldmine of ongoing income. Even if the general rules for smoke mean that we won't use it very often in combat against normal monsters.

Since the DM was running from a module,

just generally left a bad taste in my mouth, that being the taste of railroad tracks.

Ah. Modules and Rails are often related. I lost a more detailed reply, but... IMO, you should make your peace with Rails before returning to the game. And maybe ask your GM to point out whenever you try to step outside the module's rails. It doesn't sound like your GM has the skills to improvise, and the best you can do is help them, both in following the rails, and telling them after the fact, if they weren't limited by the module, all the cool stuff that they could have done.

[glass]

But the stated intention? On a good day, I might tell them, "OK, take your grappling hook down to the interstate, throw it at a fast-moving tractor trailer, and try to make it stop." Pause for effect. Followed by "Is that really what you're trying to do?" / "Not gonna happen." / something similar, with the option for them to explain why they think this makes more sense than what I'm picturing.

Icefractal already pointed out that this is dysanalogous, but I wanted to point out another issue: Stabbing such a vehicle with a sword or charging it with a lance would be similarly ineffectual at best, yet that is both expected and expected to be effective against the dragon (explicitly so in this case).

"Are you sure?" is a safeguard for when players have phenomenally misread a situation and are about to get themselves killed.

Are you sure is utterly inadequate if the "players have phenomenally misread a situation and are about to get themselves killed". Because it does nothing to get to the bottom of how they have misread the situation, nor to better align their mental map with the GM's.

Physics, mostly. If a horse can run while carrying a person, it can run while dragging that person behind them on a rope too. Its not like the person is attached to anything besides the horse/dragon.

I am pretty sure a horse cannot run with a grappling hook embedded in one of its legs!

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All of which is beside the point. The GM gave a ruling that he could hold it down if the OP beat it on an opposed Strength check. Whether anyone in this thread thinks that is a good ruling it immaterial to what they did next: Either gave the impression of cheating on that roll (bad) or actually cheated on that roll (worse).

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EDIT: In which thread did the properties of runes on tungsten come up? That sounds like a fun thread!

[Dr.Samurai]

Lets say that instead of the improvised action, after being told they should just attack, the OP had said 'fine, I drink a potion of Fly'. Do you feel from this example like the DM would have said 'no, you should just attack it'? If something like that happened, yeah, I'd say that's pretty bad.

I don't think so. But "just attack" is sort of the obvious default action anyone can take against a monster, and in this case it feels like the player wanted to have a different type of impact, or do something more. Saying "just attack" is sort of cutting the player off, whereas articulating their thoughts better might have resulted in a different outcome, and at least a different understanding on behalf of the player.

For whatever reason, this reminded me of an occurrence years ago at work. Union was going on strike, so the evening handyman had to stay late to lock all the refuse rooms in the building. The manager told him to keep the porter on duty with him. These things always happen at the last second, so the call comes in at midnight that the union is striking. So the porter is getting changed to leave and the handyman tells him he has to stay. The porter asks why and the handyman says "If I have to stay, you have to stay". So the porter shrugged that off as a petty flippant comment, finished changing, and went home. He was suspended the next day.

The way we communicate things has an impact on how people respond to us. D&D is not so serious as the story I just relayed, but the DM is not really explaining anything by saying "you should just attack". Players rely on the DM to understand how the world works and to get even get an impression. I know that I can't hold a horse in place in real life just by grabbing it with one hand. But I can in D&D. I think the DM should clear up any mismatched expectations, instead of telling the player what to do instead.

[kyoryu]

It's easy to judge in a whiteroom situation with hours between posts what the best thing to have done would be (and even better when we learn to do that when things are not so easy), but at a game table, this kind of fudge, after as much as telling the player - twice - that it's not going to work? I'd personally give the GM the leeway to be imperfect here. If the GM fudged without the warning, that would have crossed a line for me, but with the warning this just reads as a clumsy recovery of a fumble (asking for the check). I guess I have to also say that personally, I don't take a position strictly against GM fudging (e.g. in the party's favor, or fudging details that have not been established), and that influences my rankings of these things. Deceptive fudging of the 'lets do an opposed roll, oh look he got a natural 20' though I am against, and this does qualify (modulo the warnings)

Oh, yeah, for sure. As I said, a -2. A minor misstep, and certainly understandable. We get to make those.

I think we went over this on another thread. If your players are about to do something that shouldn't make sense to their characters, it's time for the GM to step out of character and give them what their characters would know about the situation and the likely consequences of their actions.

Yes, we did. And it's because it's an exceedingly common source of "horror stories".

Eh, I read it the opposite: the onus is on the player (that'd be me, I don't GM no more) interfacing using the existing rules. If a game isn't build around rule-of-cool narrative-driven, then making exceptions (such as the "kinda grapple but at range and without me being also grappled" of the opening post example) is a quick downward spiral to throwing the rules out altogether and just freeform word salad stuff (yes, I'm hyperboling).

That's a valid style. Be honest and up-front about it.

Keep the cool things in the unstructured narrative time, is what I'm trying to say, because if you do coolthings in the more structured/codified parts of the game, then players like me will take that precedent and suddenly you reloading a pistol as a move action becomes me reloading a rocket launcher as a move action, rules are also safeguards for us players!

I think any ruling like that should go under a certain amount of analysis. Basically:

1. How does this compare to baseline moves?
2. How does this compare to moves that require a resource expenditure?
3. How generally available is this?

So, generally, I feel like improvised moves should be one of:

1. Things that are generally weaker than generally available moves, but might be situationally useful (rare)
2. Things that are equivalent to other abilities that might be gated, but might be reasonable to give access to because of a situation (not in player control) that makes it viable.
3. Things that are more powerful than generally available actions, but are really tied to this unique scenario.

Here, OTOH, we seem to have a fundamental philosophical disagreement.

It is my belief that the primary role of the GM is communication, is making and keeping the game state in sync, in providing the interface between the game world and the players, in allowing the players to make reasonable decisions based on their characters' knowledge. (yes, that's all 1 thing)

This falls under that primary responsibility.

Yes, yes, yes. Since the GM has the authoritative understanding of the world and game (not necessarily the "correct" one, to be clear, I mean authoritative in more like a computer-sciencey way), it is a primary responsibility of theirs to ensure that everyone is in sync with them. This is one of the biggest soft skills a GM needs, and it requires that they deeply understand that not everybody is working with the same mental model as them, which often feels like a fairly advanced skill.

Still, a "grappling hook" is meant to perform a "ranged grapple" of sorts - that's kidna its only function ("You had ONE JOB!"), and it's right there in the name: Grappling Hook. I see this sparking an instantaneous (and silly!) table debate at many of my tables, where people propose universes in which grappling hooks can no longer stick to walls and such.

Nit: I don't think they generally do. They stick to ledges, as that gives something for them to "catch" on.

The existence of an "outside the box" is, indeed, the one big advantage RPGs have over some alternatives.

I generally agree, and play games that encourage that. However, I'm also not going to BadWrongFun not doing that.

As for why ideas aren't used very often... well, some creative approaches - like smoke on bees - are common in some circles. So if the giant bees are established to just be bees, but bigger, I expect smoke to make them docile, and I expect undead not to suffer from smoke inhalation, and I expect the added undead and added strength from, say, contracting ursine lycanthropy to mean we can carry more honey back, and I expect the fact that we didn't need to kill the bees means we can turn this 1-shot windfall into a sweet, sticky goldmine of ongoing income. Even if the general rules for smoke mean that we won't use it very often in combat against normal monsters.

And that's where as a GM I'd probably step in and say "guys, guys, no." I'd also come up with a reason not to, but I'm also very much Not About finding rules loopholes that break the game. If for no other reason than "if it's that easy, why doesn't everybody do it?"

I'm not saying I'm right, of course, and some people do want to play in those games. Which is why I think including the OOC conversation is an important part of it, even if I paper over it with an IC justification.

Ah. Modules and Rails are often related. I lost a more detailed reply, but... IMO, you should make your peace with Rails before returning to the game. And maybe ask your GM to point out whenever you try to step outside the module's rails. It doesn't sound like your GM has the skills to improvise, and the best you can do is help them, both in following the rails, and telling them after the fact, if they weren't limited by the module, all the cool stuff that they could have done.

100%. I'm not a rail fan, but modules inherently get a little linear, especially if it's a series of them. And that's fine (again, not my cuppa but no BadWrongFun), but I think it's important to clarify, OOC, the parameters of the game when it's clear there's a mismatch.

I can definitely handle a rails game easier if I've been told up front it's a rails game, as I can set my expectations.

[Quertus]

Which is fine! There's still ways to handle that within a single roll - like, the degree of failure is how far you get.

Nice one. I hadn't considered that approach / implementation, so kudos! Removes the multi-roll building tension, but condenses the general "simulation" outcome into a single roll.

The problem with press your luck is that people are really really bad at combinatorial math, and almost always set up challenges that are, effectively, impossible without realizing it.

That sounds like a "teachable moment" to me. Or at least a good learning experience. Let someone play a Rogue long enough, and maybe they'll develop an intuitive understanding of such things.

Sure. And in cases where the rolls are inter-related but not sequential, that makes a lot of sense. That leans into the "succeed 3 of 5" or whatever threshold stuff, too.

I'm specifically arguing against sequential rolls where one success/failure will end the series.

Oh, sure. I was trying to present an alternative to "one bad roll ends the series", as a way to... both support your premise, and... help those whose inner Simulationist made them feel that all those rolls were somehow important and necessary? Sure, you can call for all those rolls, if you feel you need to, but it shouldn't necessarily be "one failure ends the series" - consider what impact (and what DC!) the roll should actually have.

The person who knows that not all trees are created equal will have an easier time, as will the guy who's just good at climbing. That simulates nicely. "No child who doesn't both understand the nature of trees and have Expert level of climbing gear and skill can ever climb a tree" doesn't.

But as far as using a grappling hook to prevent a dragon from flying away, why not? It's the size of a horse .

My reading comprehension has failed me yet again - I was picturing a much larger dragon (thus my reference to tractor trailers. Highly unlikely I'd make that particular mistake as GM, even running a module, but still makes me feel silly.

Then again, dragons are fast, so maybe the momentum wasn't as far off is it sounds when the dragon's being compared to a horse.

Physics, mostly. If a horse can run while carrying a person, it can run while dragging that person behind them on a rope too. Its not like the person is attached to anything besides the horse/dragon.

Yeah, a video clip from a movie where a guy is dragged behind a horse is probably a better visual to use as a conversation starter than my "tractor trailer". You just don't see movies where a guy is tied to a horse, and his weight makes the horse stop moving.

OTOH, ropes and nets are good for breaking horses' legs. Using that as part of the stated intent would get further with me as GM than the guy being dragged behind a horse trying to use his muscles.

Icefractal already pointed out that this is dysanalogous, but I wanted to point out another issue: Stabbing such a vehicle with a sword or charging it with a lance would be similarly ineffectual at best, yet that is both expected and expected to be effective against the dragon (explicitly so in this case).

Stabbing a tank, maybe, but my car seems pretty vulnerable to being stabbed, or to the driver being impaled through the windshield with a lance.

Still, there's definitely creatures - like, say, Iron Golems - that I wouldn't normally consider stabbing without having a magical weapon, for similar reasons of "this doesn't seem like it should do anything".

[NichG]

Hahaha - well, that answers one difference between us: "sparking a table debate" rates it an automatic "10" in my books. There's absolutely nothing better in an RPG than a good table debate. Most RPG sessions at best leave the fantasy world and its inhabitants in a better state; a table debate can leave this world and its inhabitants in a better state. 10/10, would highly recommend.

I mean I agree that the +7 to +10 range can include (positively) life-changing gaming. I don't actually think randomly dropping into table debate is the vehicle that gets you there consistently though. It's not always inappropriate or unhelpful, but I do think often its a mistake because momentum and spotlight balancing are important in higher quality GM-ing, and table debate at the very least breaks the momentum and, especially in a 'I think my action should work' case, centers things on that one player rather than on the group.

On the matter of the high numbers, +8 on that scale is for the best/most impactful GM-ing I've ever personally experienced (a GM for whose game we drove 6 hours weekly and stayed overnight for a year or two). +9 is like, I can imagine this is theoretically possible, sort of like looking at the stuff Olympic athletes do. +10 is, I acknowledge there are things my imagination is insufficient to apprehend, but may still be possible.

Here, OTOH, we seem to have a fundamental philosophical disagreement.

It is my belief that the primary role of the GM is communication, is making and keeping the game state in sync, in providing the interface between the game world and the players, in allowing the players to make reasonable decisions based on their characters' knowledge. (yes, that's all 1 thing)

This falls under that primary responsibility.

Now, sure, I've gamed with plenty of idiots, whose intuition betrayed them and/or couldn't grok concepts like the interaction between dragon weight and boat buoyancy, or human psychology and what you can tell about a customer who asks, "how much is this?", or between dragon wings and flight, or any number of other things. And I've been that idiot from time to time.

It is the GM's primary responsibility to catch these errors, and the table's responsibility to either explain things to the ignoramus, or at least to pull out the clue-by-fours and make sure that the ignoramus knows that they're an ignoramus, in the event that they are simply incapable of understanding the situation, no matter how many times and ways the group tries to beat it into their head.

ABSOLUTELY the tone of my comment is "convince me". We're in a potential desync situation here, we need to use our words and get back in sync.

See this I think starts from a good place, but then it kind of follows a path to what I'd consider an error. Yes, communication is the job. But that's communication, *not* persuasion. And while teaching can be good, sometimes its unwelcome or even outright inappropriate.

Like, this is how alignment and morality systems lead to toxic group behaviors. The system tells the GM 'your job is to adjudicate shifts in this number according to this rubric' which, okay fine. But the number is labelled 'good' or 'evil' for example. So the player does something they think is good - they see a merchant sell some slaves, so they go and kill them. The rubric says 'murder moves you 1 point towards evil' and in that setting, in that fantasy society, that was murder. The GM applies the rubric. If we take the table debate approach here, this puts the GM in the position of having to argue, OOC, that killing slavers is evil because the setting is built around that conceit, and from there its easy to slip into 'so what, you're calling me (the player) evil because I think that was a good act?!'.

Sure you could think oh, I can teach a thing about two wrongs not making a right and how murder is murder even if you kill a bad person and ... That's a terrible mistake to do in the context of a game where the players haven't consented to be taught in that way.

What you should do is just play games without alignment *cough*. I mean, one thing you could do instead is say, 'this is a game mechanic; in setting, some gods get to judge events, and this is how they judged; if you disagree, take it up with them in-character'.

And I take GMs who take the stance, "I'm an idiot, and I'm gonna do this thing wrong and nonsensical, and leave us in an irreconcilable game state desync" to deserve a very negative rating on their handling of such a situation. It erodes the fundamental ability of the player to meaningfully interact with the game environment, to take actions from the PoV of their character. [To reference another thread, it would be as if you were making Runes, one of which had an effect based on several factors including the magnetic properties of the metal / substance it was inscribed upon, you inscribed it in Tungsten, the GM didn't know the magnetic properties of Tungsten, didn't care, and made a random ruling on what the rune did based on their ignorant misunderstanding of Tungsten. Wouldn't that have ruined the coolness of experimenting with Runes for you? Didn't you say that the value of the Exploration (my word) of Runes required GM consistency?]

In what way do you view this differently than I do?

There's a time and a place, and being careful of those is going to be important for the plus side of things. A simple and really powerful move is to say 'lets talk about this after game' when there are larger things that need to be untangled.

For something like the OP's situation, the way I'd handle it if trying to run 'normal' D&D would probably be to say something like: 'If you do that action, I'm going to run it as an attack with an improvised ranged weapon the size of the grapple head, so you might do 1d4 bashing damage or something if you hit AC but the grapple will just bounce off; if you crit and confirm then its piercing and the hook will be latched in, but the dragon can dislodge it with a Move action at the cost of taking the attack damage again; for what you're trying to do, the appropriate weapon would be a net; and a net doesn't grapple, it entangles and permits an unopposed strength check to just break out, just so you know for the future.' I'm not trying to argue that its physically realistic (mistake IMO), I'm not trying to enter into a debate with the player about what the best possible way to run this would be (because that loses the momentum of the fight and takes spotlight from others). However I *am* trying to communicate clearly how I will run things if the player goes ahead with the action, keeping in mind their intent.

If the player wants to discuss alternate approaches, that's fine - its the gameplay. If the player wants to argue 'no, you should run it my way', then 'for now I'm running it this way, lets talk after game if this is really important to you'. That talk may not be a physics debate. More likely than not, its going to be me explaining similar things to what I'm saying now, that in a fight situation momentum of play is important, abstraction is to be expected, my priority is to make good enough rulings and move things forward rather than spend an hour figuring out how to model penetrating wounds in D&D, and that things like increasing the resolution of the combat model are what I use the time between campaigns for rather than the time at the table - they're welcome to pitch the idea that next we play a hyper-realistic system, and even help me design it.

And like, if after saying the offhand thing about how a Net is the appropriate weapon in bog-standard D&D the player responded with 'well actually, with a net you can also hold something in place with an opposed strength check' I'd say 'that may be so, but you don't have a net, lets move on' and not get into a rules debate about whether e.g. the opposed strength check could be bypassed by making the break DC of the rope in the hypothetical that this was a net instead of a grapple. That would definitely be a player trying to detach from the fight and just debate rules, and that's unfair to the other players.

Now if I were running a more high-powered, super-hero/demigod/wuxia/action movie kind of game (which honestly is actually closer to my normal), I'd probably just let the OP's thing work but fix the problems in my narration. E.g. no, piercing the wing with a grapple and then expecting to hold the dragon is nonsense but I don't need to give a physics lecture about that, instead its just "Okay, you hurl the grapple with such force it not only punctures the wing, but wraps around the dragon's body and ends up getting lodged against their horns! Oh by the way, the free end is receding fast as the dragon thrashes - you could grab it, I'll let that go as a non-action, but you probably need to secure it to yourself in a way that isn't going to be so easy to get free of - want to tie your fate together with it?". Essentially 'yes,but', because it keeps the action fluid and narrative, not because its necessarily physically the most correct thing. Zany stuff just works, but I get to throw in complications, and you can accept or reject and we move on.

So, in the case of the runes magic system, there's a signal there which is absent in the OP's case. Namely, if I put a system like that in front of a player, I'm actually saying 'the gameplay here is playing a magical engineer'. I'm *explicitly inviting* that. Hopefully I would only do that if the players as a group were interested, but that's a failing I know about myself - I would totally put that in there even if its only going to appeal to one player. So practically speaking, what I should do is again 'lets talk after game and hash out the details then, so other people don't sit here for 2 hours while we nerd out about magical physics'. Would I do that? Ehh, I never claimed to be a +10 GM... I'd probably mess this up more often than I should.

Still, a "grappling hook" is meant to perform a "ranged grapple" of sorts - that's kidna its only function ("You had ONE JOB!"), and it's right there in the name: Grappling Hook. I see this sparking an instantaneous (and silly!) table debate at many of my tables, where people propose universes in which grappling hooks can no longer stick to walls and such.

And how do thrown nets work? Do they use the grapple rules, modified, or their own subsystem?

Nets are a thing at least in 3.5e, and the rules for nets make it pretty clear that a grapple isn't going to do very much... You have a 10ft range max, you have bad to-hit penalties if the net isn't in its proper 'ready to spring out' conformation, the net can be bypassed by a flat DC Strength check to break the ropes (oh and they just have 5hp), and even if all goes well you just entangle rather than grapple. Though you can prevent movement with a net if the captive doesn't use any of the various outs a net permits. A grapple is like a ... 1 strand net, sort of? Without the weighted edges, the ability to cover the entire body, and so on. So outside of a cinematic game, IMO this idea just doesn't work. But in a cinematic game it absolutely could work. So that's what I mean that its sort of the GM's call as to what kind of game they're running, and getting into the realism arguments or even the RAW arguments is kind of not the *real* reason for making a ruling and moving on. It actually acts counter to that, in that it can create the impression 'oh, this is the part of the game where I use my player skill at debate-the-GM to win'.

Which also is not necessarily badwrongfun, but as with the runic magic system, you probably want to signal that it's going to be that kind of game in advance rather than just accidentally find yourself running it (or worse, running it that way for one player while running it strictly for another player who isn't using the same OOC conversational strategies). Like the aforementioned Paranoia game where table debate is literally pleading your case to Friend Computer - well-signaled, so good to go.

[Telok]

I'm confused - wouldn't padded sumo combat be an optimal time to attempt stunts?

That is, when every action is vital, I'd be disinclined to waste them; however, when my options are "chip some small percentage towards victory" vs "potentially change the landscape of the battlefield", suddenly it's a whole lot more appealing. There's a reason why BFC has such a good rep around here.

So why are your experiences and inclination the opposite of mine?

It would, but...

TLDR: in the last 20 years of d&d every stunt-like thing I've attempted (outside a few 3e high level super-skill checks the d20 didn't matter on) has either failed from additional d20 rolls or had less effect than if I'd standard attacked or cast a spell.

Also, battlefield control in d&d is near exclusively hard-coded spells, not improvised actions & stunts by warriors.

Spoiler

Show

Basically the vast majority of d&d combat takes place in small simple areas with few meaningful hazards and the assumption that all opponents must be killed. You can make it otherwise, but that's more work and not much encouraged by the mechanics. Most ad-hoc damage stops being meaningful after low levels because damage/hp is how the game scales difficulty post 3e, and the normal environmental hazards are scaled to not one-hit-kill low level pcs. Statuses could be useful except they've become less and less powerful except for action denial, again because its 'unfun' for pcs to be hit by debilitating effects. Thus the race to zero hp is kept focused on standard attacks while non-attack actions are depreciated.

There's also the extra rolls that are usually involved. In 4e opponents are level scaled and pcs are typically good at something with about a 75% success rate vs static dcs, or they aren't which gates whatever you're trying behind an extra usually 40%+ failure check. That's before getting into opposed rolls or the fact that most stunt type stuff in d&d calls for plysical strength & dexterity + acrobat & athlete rolls that most characters aren't very good at, and the ones that are good at it have the higher accuracy & damage attacks so losing that damage is harmful to success the majority of the time. In 5e the rolls & success rates are about the same (most pcs bonuses being nearly static relative to dcs) and while the opposition scales differently the hazard damage & dcs aren't scaled by level and have diminishing returns as levels increase.

Finally wotc's d&d's exception based design is strictly adhered to in combat and stunts inherently violate that. D&d gms have up to 20 years of the "if you don't have an ability that says you can, then you can't" paradigm governing often 60%+ of total game time. That's a hard habit for many of them to break, especially as there are a number of them who have never played anything but d&d. Notably, all computer games also work this way by the inherent limits of the technology, causing most gamers to get a double dose of "need a button" behavior reinforcement.

[KorvinStarmast]

Basically the vast majority of d&d combat takes place in small simple areas with few meaningful hazards and the assumption that all opponents must be killed.

Not true. The knock out blow is hard coded in the Combat rules, chapter 9. (I would personally like to see better treatment of the moral bit from the early edtions added to the current DMG. I fold it in when I DM because I like it).
Your point on stunts - as implemented in other games - isn't too far off the mark. It's a feature that a lot of folks have lobbied the devs to fold into the game.

and the normal environmental hazards are scaled to not one-hit-kill low level pcs.

Actually, falling damage can do just that - it killed a bard in our first campaign - when it can't do that with higher level PCs. Our blade lock fell off of a dragon's back and hit the ground. His HP were low, but he was above zero, IIRC the fall was just under 200'. I guess that's a stunt.

As to some stunts: monks can run up and down walls and run across liquid surfaces at level 9. Kind of like a stunt.
I don't think that Battle Master Maneuvers are equivalent to stunts (not cinematic enough for the most part).

Statuses could be useful except they've become less and less powerful except for action denial, again because its 'unfun' for pcs to be hit by debilitating effects.

And yet we keep seeing Hold Person, Charmed condition, Paralyzed condition in the game, and the incapacitated condition. Our Life cleric got turned to stone by a gorgon. We had to go and find and NPC to cast Greater Restoration. That became a mission in its own right.

I've been playing this edition for about 10 years.
A few months ago, a Disintegrate did for a level 17 Cleric in the middle of a fight: we made the mistake of taking on a lich and his three or four stone/iron golems.

Your critique is off the mark.

Honestly, if you don't play the game anymore you might want to lay off the inaccurate summaries.
Enjoy the games that you do play.

[kyoryu]

Statuses could be useful except they've become less and less powerful except for action denial, again because its 'unfun' for pcs to be hit by debilitating effects. Thus the race to zero hp is kept focused on standard attacks while non-attack actions are depreciated.

Not sure why non-action-denial status would be less effective?

Also, I'm a fan of the game being at least slightly asymmetrical for those reasons - I'm perfectly fine with PCs denying NPC actions.

Even denial on PCs can be handled more subtly and interestingly than just "you can't". 4e tried some of this, but it wasn't handled as well as it could have been, or required a GM mentality that wasn't really there. So, control that's more like "you can only attack this creature at <x> penalty" or "you take <y> damage when you perform this action" are, I think, a lot more interesting as they impact what the character does without just hard taking over the player's options.

[lesser_minion]

But they weren't, because empirically, no roll from the PC would have succeeded. You physically cannot roll higher than a 20 on the die. There was no way for them to win, so there shouldn't have been a roll in the first place.

The point is that whether they matter or not is up to the DM, not the number on whatever statblock you found. (And to reiterate, I think the DM in this case made a bad call - two in fact.)

Fudging dice to ensure that a PC fails is basically indefensible no matter what system you're playing. So I'm not sure where the need to pre-emptively defend 5e came from.

Additionally, an opposed check involves two dice. Rolling a 20 on one isn't a guarantee that that side will win if the other side has a better modifier. This is also far from the only reason why a natural 20 isn't an automatic success, in 5e or any other edition.

[JNAProductions]

Fudging dice to ensure that a PC fails is basically indefensible no matter what system you're playing. So I'm not sure where the need to pre-emptively defend 5e came from.

Your defence is also wrong. An opposed check involves two dice, rolling a 20 on one isn't a guarantee that that side will win. This is also far from the only reason why a natural 20 isn't an automatic success, in 5e or any other edition.

Echoing this. If you NEED an event to occur (dragon gets away, prince is kidnapped, queen is dead, whatever) then you include that in the pitch for the game. And it should, in my preference at least, be part of the introduction.

Assuming the DM was using a standard Young Blue Dragon, they've a Strength mod of +5. Even if the DM rules that the dragon wins ties, it's still a 10% chance of success against the 24 rolled by Catullus. Rolling it hidden really brings to mind the idea that the DM is just forcing the outcome they wanted.

[Easy e]

If the report we have in the OP is accurate, my contention is that they didn't do that. "You should just attack instead" isn't "warning the player of potential consequences of their actions" because it isn't frank and open about the consequences of any actions.

The actual way I say this should have gone is that the very first response to "I want to sink my grappling hook into the dragon's wings so it can't fly away." should be "you won't be able to stop it flying away with a grappling hook" and letting the player choose what to do with that information. That actually tells the player what the consequences of the action will be.

When a DM "suggests" something else that IS a warning to the player. Perhaps it isn't a blunt hammer to the head warning, but it is a warning.

Person- "I want to go play in traffic."
Authority figure- "You might want to stay inside instead."

[JNAProductions]

When a DM "suggests" something else that IS a warning to the player. Perhaps it isn't a blunt hammer to the head warning, but it is a warning.

Person- "I want to go play in traffic."
Authority figure- "You might want to stay inside instead."

I've been guilty of the "Are you sure?" as a DM.
It's much better to be clear-don't ask "Are you sure?" tell them "If you do [ACTION], [CONSQUENCES] will happen (potentially on a failure, potentially no matter what you roll)," and then ask them if they're sure.

Lay out the stakes. Make it clear.

[kyoryu]

I've been guilty of the "Are you sure?" as a DM.
It's much better to be clear-don't ask "Are you sure?" tell them "If you do [ACTION], [CONSQUENCES] will happen (potentially on a failure, potentially no matter what you roll)," and then ask them if they're sure.

Lay out the stakes. Make it clear.

Yes. This. All of this.

I really don't get why GMs want to play as coy as they do.

[JNAProductions]

I've been guilty of the "Are you sure?" as a DM.
It's much better to be clear-don't ask "Are you sure?" tell them "If you do [ACTION], [CONSQUENCES] will happen (potentially on a failure, potentially no matter what you roll)," and then ask them if they're sure.

Lay out the stakes. Make it clear.

I should clarify, this is for situations where the character would know the consequences, while the player doesn't realize.

Obviously if you're in tense negotiations with Duke Archibald, you don't know that his wife recently fell ill and bringing her up is a bad move. It'd have immediate negative ramifications, but the characters and players don't know.
However, if a player thinks it's a good idea to challenge him to a duel to prove superiority, while the character knows that duels are always to the death in this kingdom, then you outline precisely what the PC knows.

[Talakeal]

So as for the situation:

If the GM fudged, they are almost certainly in the wrong.

If they are running a printed module, and it says the dragon flies away no matter what, it is a railroad, but I don't really hold it against the GM to follow the rails, although it certainly isn't a good sign.

Mechanically, it seems really weird that there is no benefit to being large in a grapple. I could easily see the GM giving it advantage in this situation, but even so it needs a 19 to match the PCs nat 20, so ~19% chance. The GM might also have had the two roles be unrelated; for example requiring an athletics roll from the PC to establish the hold and then a saving throw from the dragon to escape rather than a single opposed roll.



As for the thread though; this is something I notice a lot. People always tell me that I could have averted one of my famous "horror stories" by warning the PCs; but it doesn't help. Some players, and I am certainly getting this vibe from the OP, do not like being told no; they will double down on whatever the GM warned them against, and then hold a grudge against the GM when it doesn't work out for them.



Analyzing the scene:

A grappling hook is not a harpoon. It is not made to impale stuff, rather it is made to catch onto ledges.

Further, D&D is not a game about locational damage and called shots. It is not really fair to force the GM to come up with such a system on the fly to accommodate your stunt.

From a physics perspective, unless you are braced against something, the dragon is just going to lift you up and carry you away. If a PC told me they were trying this plan, I would assume they are bracing the rope against something to provide the needed leverage even if they didn't explicitly tell me so.

So, if the dragon successfully resists, I would assume either the player lost the tug of war and let go of the rope, the rope broke, or the dragon managed to disentangle itself and drop the rope. In none of these situations would the player be holding onto the rope as the dragon flew away.


Now, this is probably a good thing; the dragon would probably drop and then kill the lone PC.

However; this is something I have noticed with some players; remember how up-thread I said they double down and hold a grudge on the GM? Well, a lot of the time, their response to this situation is to suicide their character as a final screw-you to the GM; knowing that a dead PC mid adventure is disrupting the game and the narrative.

So, perhaps, not allowing the PC to be carried away by the dragon is itself a further part of the meta-game power play.

[Ionathus]

Yeah, though the DM warning the player off it in this case would have needed the DM to clear up at the very start what the player's intended goal was and be open about it not working. The point to do that was when the grappling hook was mentioned, and the way to do it would be to say "You can't hold it down, it will fly off with your grappling hook and you as well if you want to hold on" not "Just click your attack button again I don't pay you to think".

Yep, absolutely. The problem isn't that the DM was wrong about the mechanics (though I do think they could've given more leeway -- see my next reply below -- I'll defend any DM's right to make their own judgment calls and stick to them) -- the problem is the DM not immediately making it clear that this was a doomed idea.

Also I love the heat on "Just click your attack button again I don't pay you to think." Very satisfying to me on a vindictive, bad-DM-judging level

I'd still be minded to not have that work with a grappling hook, it doesn't really meaningfully restrain someone or something it's stuck in except by causing pain*.

Physics, mostly. If a horse can run while carrying a person, it can run while dragging that person behind them on a rope too. Its not like the person is attached to anything besides the horse/dragon.

A human can run while wearing a 25lbs. backpack, but not with a 25lbs. weight tied to one leg. You don't just "drag it along the ground" behind you: the movement of your leg jerks it around, sabotages your gait, and probably causes further damage. The weight isn't the only problem: where it's attached is also important.

It's believable to imagine a 170-lbs. adventurer attached to the wing of a horse-sized dragon would have a similar effect. OP's GM was entirely justified in making whatever ruling fit their game and their table (and really just whiffed on communicating it to OP), but it's a totally reasonable idea at its core.

Eh, I read it the opposite: the onus is on the player (that'd be me, I don't GM no more) interfacing using the existing rules. If a game isn't build around rule-of-cool narrative-driven, then making exceptions (such as the "kinda grapple but at range and without me being also grappled" of the opening post example) is a quick downward spiral to throwing the rules out altogether and just freeform word salad stuff (yes, I'm hyperboling).

Wanting to do a cool thing is all good and fun, but the slippery slope is there, and when the rulings are untethered from the rules, then you don't have a game anymore.
...
Looping back to grapplig hook at dragon: aside that I agree the GM could've should've said "no" or maybe "no, but if your intent is preventing him from leaving, you coukd try grappling?" As a fellow player if you'd have introduced the precedent that it's possbile to grapple at range at no condition imposed on myself? I wouldn't say I'd raise a fuss, but my mind for sure would go "ok, so in this game with this gm this is possible, how can I make use of this?"

Keep the cool things in the unstructured narrative time, is what I'm trying to say, because if you do coolthings in the more structured/codified parts of the game, then players like me will take that precedent and suddenly you reloading a pistol as a move action becomes me reloading a rocket launcher as a move action, rules are also safeguards for us players!

I don't put a lot of stock in slippery slope arguments when it comes to GMing. "If we let players think creatively once, soon they might want to think creatively all the time!" should be a message of encouragement, not a dire warning.

Embrace the chaos, I say. If I wanted to play a perfectly tactical and rules-as-written game with no edge cases or Rule Of Cool, I'd pick up Gloomhaven or take out a second mortgage and finally get into Warhammer 40K. I play D&D and other TTRPGs like it precisely because having a human at the helm allows for creativity.

Are you sure is utterly inadequate if the "players have phenomenally misread a situation and are about to get themselves killed". Because it does nothing to get to the bottom of how they have misread the situation, nor to better align their mental map with the GM's.

No, I was being pithy "Are you sure" is just a meme that most D&D players seem to know, and I feel like it's often all I need to get players to think twice about their choice and really consider the consequences.

In a scenario where it's actually necessary, "Are you sure" should also come with a more explicit statement of the circumstances -- "Remember, this king has said he would immediately execute anyone who was even associated with the Forest Rebels. Are you sure you want to tell him you're their secret leaders? I'm not saying you can't tell him -- and you'd probably have pretty good odds of escaping given his quantity and quality of soldiers -- but I got the impression you had other things you wanted from him first..."

It's sometimes hard to do it in such a way that it doesn't sound condescending or controlling. But sometimes you do just have to pause the game, go above the table, and talk about the situation. 9 times out of 10, the players have forgotten an incidental line of dialogue or a key dynamic because it happened ten sessions and four months ago IRL, but was only five days ago in-game. "Your character would remember XYZ" is one of the most versatile and important tools in a DM's toolbox, and it's critical to good-faith DMing in my opinion.

[Jason]

Fudging dice to ensure that a PC fails is basically indefensible no matter what system you're playing.

It's SOP in Paranoia.

But no, I don't ever fudge dice to make a PC fail. There are plenty of other tools in the box if I need to rescue an NPC or keep a PC from messing up some other vital plot point. 9 times out of 10 I let good ideas succeed, say goodbye to an NPC I wanted to save, and find some other way to get the plot moving again.

[Easy e]

I've been guilty of the "Are you sure?" as a DM.
It's much better to be clear-don't ask "Are you sure?" tell them "If you do [ACTION], [CONSQUENCES] will happen (potentially on a failure, potentially no matter what you roll)," and then ask them if they're sure.

Lay out the stakes. Make it clear.

Sure, I never said the GM was perfect or couldn't improve, just that they didn't do anything wrong either.

Could things have been different? Sure.



Out of curiosity, why is it always the DMs fault? Can player's be at fault? What is an example of a player being at fault?

[icefractal]

"Are you sure?" is unhelpful and insufficient for many cases.

All it does is tell the player that there's some reason they might not want to take the action. But if there's more than one such reason and the player has already considered the one they know about, the question does nothing.

Example:
* The PCs are investigating Baron Safflower and find out he's secretly an Orcus cultist who's been sacrificing people to summon demons.
* The PCs then see Count Sunflower (note, different person) walking past on the street, and mix up the name because they're similar.

Player: Sunflower?! This is our chance - I shoot him!
DM: Are you sure? (meaning: why would you attack this guy, he's not your enemy)
Player: Yes! (meaning: I know this is in public and I'll be a fugitive after doing so, but it's worth it to stop the human sacrifices)
Result: Messed up situation that makes no sense IC.

Better GM: You can shoot him, but why are you attacking Count Sunflower?
Player: Because he's an Orcus cultist, duh.
GM: That's Baron Safflower, different person. It's theoretically possible the Count could be one too, but you've seen no indication of such.

You can solve the problem from the player side too - if the GM asks whether you're sure, don't say yes or no. Instead, ask them why they're asking that.

[ciopo]

I don't put a lot of stock in slippery slope arguments when it comes to GMing. "If we let players think creatively once, soon they might want to think creatively all the time!" should be a message of encouragement, not a dire warning.

Embrace the chaos, I say. If I wanted to play a perfectly tactical and rules-as-written game with no edge cases or Rule Of Cool, I'd pick up Gloomhaven or take out a second mortgage and finally get into Warhammer 40K. I play D&D and other TTRPGs like it precisely because having a human at the helm allows for creativity.

It's a matter of time and place, cool things during narrative time, like I don't know, put explosives in the elevator such that when it's called it blows up? cool beans! do it again! It's cool moment where planning and thinking results in a good time.

Ignoring the rules within the space where they are most-defined? (ie: combat) You unbound my action from the framework that exists, why are we pretending to play (whatever system), if the desired outcome is freeform cooperative worldbuilding?

[kyoryu]

Out of curiosity, why is it always the DMs fault? Can player's be at fault? What is an example of a player being at fault?

I wouldn't say fault. I'd say responsibility.

The GM has the authoritative state of the world. As such, it's their job to ensure that everyone is on the same page, since they're the only one that can do it.. Players don't realize their view is out of sync, only the GM is in the position to know that.

"Are you sure?" is unhelpful and insufficient for many cases.

All it does is tell the player that there's some reason they might not want to take the action. But if there's more than one such reason and the player has already considered the one they know about, the question does nothing.

Example:
* The PCs are investigating Baron Safflower and find out he's secretly an Orcus cultist who's been sacrificing people to summon demons.
* The PCs then see Count Sunflower (note, different person) walking past on the street, and mix up the name because they're similar.

Player: Sunflower?! This is our chance - I shoot him!
DM: Are you sure? (meaning: why would you attack this guy, he's not your enemy)
Player: Yes! (meaning: I know this is in public and I'll be a fugitive after doing so, but it's worth it to stop the human sacrifices)
Result: Messed up situation that makes no sense IC.

Better GM: You can shoot him, but why are you attacking Count Sunflower?
Player: Because he's an Orcus cultist, duh.
GM: That's Baron Safflower, different person. It's theoretically possible the Count could be one too, but you've seen no indication of such.

I'd go one step further.

GM: "Why are you attacking Count Sunflower? He's just a nobleman, he's not really somebody you've had issues with?"
Player: "What? Hes an Orcus cultist!"
GM: "Ah, yeah, no, that's Baron Safflower. Count Sunflower is just a dude as far as you know."

The PCs know that they have no bad info on Sunflower, so bringing that up is relevant.

[Rynjin]

But they weren't, because empirically, no roll from the PC would have succeeded. You physically cannot roll higher than a 20 on the die. There was no way for them to win, so there shouldn't have been a roll in the first place.

That...is not how opposed rolls work. Higher result between the two rolling parties wins.

PC: Rolls 20 on the die, gets a result of 24.
Dragon: Rolls 11 on the die, gets a result of 16.

Outcome: PC wins.

PC: Rolls 20 on the die, gets a result of 24.
Dragon: Rolls 19 on the die, gets a result of 24.

Outcome: Tie, meaning defender's advantage gives the dragon the win.

PC: Rolls 20 on the die, gets a result of 24.
Dragon: Rolls 20 on the die, gets a result of 25.

Outcome: Total dragon victory.

Long story short in an opposed rolls scenario, this roll was not "impossible". The dragon only had a 10% greater chance of success than the PC, at maximum; 5% chance if we take ties as the PC winning.

The point is that whether they matter or not is up to the DM, not the number on whatever statblock you found. (And to reiterate, I think the DM in this case made a bad call - two in fact.)

And the DM judged that it should be an opposed roll. That's why he had the OP roll a Strength check. Then also made the dragon roll something in secret. So obviously, empirically there was no set DC the GM had in mind that was "impossible". Except if he fudged said opposed roll, but I'm assuming lack of malice on the GM's part.

[kyoryu]

On Authoritative State

This is a term I keep using, so I want to explain better.

I'm a game programmer, mostly multiplayer. One of the first issues you have in multiplayer games is that every machine involved has a slightly different understanding of what's going on, due to the fact that they're not local, and that it takes time for data to get from one machine to another.

So, you have a character at position [0,0]. The player starts moving to the right, and informs the other players of this.

So, until they receive that message, the other players will think the character is at [0,0], while the character thinks they're at like [5,0]. They're not consistent.

If player B tries to hit player A at [0,0], they'll think they should hit, while player A thinks they should miss.

MMOs handle this in a number of ways. Mostly, it's by having a server that is the authority - what they say goes. Usually, then, you send your requests to hit or whatever to the server, and the server will tell everyone what happens - what the individual client thinks just doesn't matter.

The GM in most RPGs in analogous to the server. Sure, some things (which square you're on in a gridded scenario) are public info, but there's a lot that's not. And, ultimately, the GM is presumed to be authoritative (which is not the same thing as right - even if they're wrong, their idea of reality is what will be ruled against.)

MMOs also are less strict than that in some ways - like, movement is usually what is called "client-predictive". That means that the client is allowed to say "yeah, I moved here", and the server then says "okay, that seems reasonable, sure you did" and updates everyone else. This can be similar in RPGs, too, that individuals can correct the GM's understanding, and the GM can go "oh, yeah, I forgot".

But, ultimately, the server/GM are authoritative about the state of the world. As such, it is their job to resolve disputes and to inform clients/players of state mismatches, and to do the ultimate resolution of actions.

[NichG]

Out of curiosity, why is it always the DMs fault? Can player's be at fault? What is an example of a player being at fault?

I'd definitely say that not only can players be at fault, but just like DMs beyond just a player doing what they're responsible for and not breaking stuff, there is space for above-and-beyond things which make some players just better to have at the table than others, even stylistic differences aside.

Edit: As to Kyoryu's more focused point about responsibility in communication, I do think there are cases where it is the player's responsibility to recognize their own confusion and correct it. Mystery type scenarios for example have some elements of this. Also, situations where the confusion would be more visible to the player themselves than to the DM - e.g. places where the uncertainty would be revealed to the player by them trying to plan (in their own head), where rather than asking the DM something they just assume it. In general, if you can fix a problem but you don't, you have some responsibility for the problem - if a player could fix a communication issue but chooses not to, then that's (also) on them.

Spoiler: Quantitative ranking of pet peeves

Show

E.g. on that -10 to +10 scale, something like a player who is silently observing the session but also doesn't have a character to run would be the 0 baseline. They're not harming the game (nothing is wrong with them being there and watching) but they're not particularly contributing anything either.

A player who agrees to play a character but basically checks out and has to be poked to take their actions in combat and such? That's like a -1 in casual campaigns, down to as bad as a -4 in high difficulty/tight balance/tactical challenge types of games - the presence of that player is actually a detriment to the table compared to having decided not to fill that slot in at least certain identifiable ways. For the stuff I run, this would almost never be worse than a -1 generally.

Spotlight hogging? Maybe a -1 or -2. More work for the DM, but its fixable.

A player who constantly tells other players incorrect things about the rules, or make up 'rules' whole-cloth and tell players 'how things work', bypassing the GM? Probably around a -3, depending on details. Could be worse, but generally its not *so* bad because these things are fixable and just annoying. I don't just mean doing this by accident once or twice, but as a pattern of behavior or even intentional thing like 'I don't like the way the GM rules this, so I'm going to tell the other players it works differently' kinds of BS.

A player who loves to get into various kinds of OOC interactions that halt the game? -1 to -4, with -1 being like side-conversations with people who need to pay attention and -4 being like power struggle types of things with the GM (constant rules disputes, complaining without accepting any sort of resolution in a way that interrupts the game, etc).

A player who joins a campaign with a group just at threshold-of-play, but then 50% of the time schedules other things over the game? Maybe a -4, because it actually prevents play from happening for others.

A player who randomly initiates PvP behaviors in a cooperative game or at a table with a no-PvP rule? That's like a -3 even when its some small petty thing (rogue stealing a few coins to show off their rogueyness), and the high end having almost no ceiling - sabotaging the thing the rest of the party has been working on building for the last 6 months, killing PCs or NPCs the PCs care about, etc could be -7, -8, whatever. If some player or GM says 'I'm quitting the hobby over it', at least a -7. Physical violence results, at least -8, going to -9 depending on the real life consequences. Since I'm reserving the 10s for 'my imagination is not good enough' I can't give examples and still hold to that rubric; it gets cartoonish except, well, people getting angry enough can lead to ruined lives even without needing some kind of Olympian-level bad player.

A player who constantly lobbies for rule interpretations that benefit them, or manipulates the GM? At least a -3, no ceiling. I've been in a game with someone I'd call at least a -7, maybe even a -8, who basically did individual private messages on various shared IM/social media platforms with the players trying to get them to all gang up on the DM, and essentially crashed the game and gave the DM burnout. Probably ruined some real-life friendships there.

A player who uses the game as an excuse to bully other players or the GM? At least a -5 (even just at the level of like 'git gud scrub' comments), no ceiling.

That's the bad side of things...

On the good side of things, players being proactive, players being aware of when other players (or the GM) are not having fun, players who can mediate disputes or help the group reach consensus (general leadership), players who can catch misunderstandings and miscommunications and understand how to explain things to each-other to prevent or fix them, players who become invested in the game and contribute creatively to make the experience better for everyone, etc. Reading the GM's mind is also a good trait IMO - not required, but a player who can pick up on subtle tells or the way things are leaning and play along is great. Can I put numbers to those? Uh...

A sort of contentious one is the chaos gremlin player, the one who pushes a big red button before the party can fully discuss whether to push the big red button. For me this isn't + or - on its own, its very dependent on the degree to which the player reads the room and recognizes a stall and then acts to break it up, in which case its a huge plus. I basically want at least one (probably exactly one is best) 'considerate chaos gremlin' in every group I run for ideally. But it can also be a moderate minus if this is done inconsiderately.

[Slipjig]

Really, there's no way your character should have been able to hold down the dragon anyway in this scenario. No matter how strong they are, the maximum amount of downward force they can exert is their own bodyweight. Anything beyond that is them just having a better grip on the rope as they are pulled into the air.

Admittedly, it sounds like your DM didn't handle the situation well overall.

[Psyren]

@Rynjin, you're right, I misread the situation - it was indeed possible (albeit vanishingly unlikely) for the PC's natural 20 to be a failure without any malice or error from the DM. But combined with the rest of the story I definitely think there was fudging going on and that the roll was pointless.

[Rynjin]

@Rynjin, you're right, I misread the situation - it was indeed possible (albeit vanishingly unlikely) for the PC's natural 20 to be a failure without any malice or error from the DM. But combined with the rest of the story I definitely think there was fudging going on and that the roll was pointless.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I think we're on the same page there. I think everything "on paper" is fine but the behind the screen roll that miraculously beats a 20 is always pretty sus. It's why I roll almost eveyrthing openly. The only exceptions are things which are completely secret to the PCs, like Stealthed enemies or catching a Disease.

[Quertus]

Yes, yes, yes.

Since the GM has the authoritative understanding of the world and game (not necessarily the "correct" one, to be clear, I mean authoritative in more like a computer-sciencey way), it is a primary responsibility of theirs to ensure that everyone is in sync with them. This is one of the biggest soft skills a GM needs, and it requires that they deeply understand that not everybody is working with the same mental model as them, which often feels like a fairly advanced skill.

Any tips for learning this skill, or for applying it to the issue at hand?

Nit: I don't think they generally do. They stick to ledges, as that gives something for them to "catch" on.

Hahaha, let's just say I was being silly. (I was actually picturing the classic Robin Hood castle walls, not walls in general)

I generally agree, and play games that encourage that. However, I'm also not going to BadWrongFun not doing that.

Good call.

And that's where as a GM I'd probably step in and say "guys, guys, no." I'd also come up with a reason not to, but I'm also very much Not About finding rules loopholes that break the game. If for no other reason than "if it's that easy, why doesn't everybody do it?"

Ah, that was the trick: everyone in beekeeper circles does do it, because it's really effective with bees. Even if it's not effective as a general tactic against arbitrary monsters, it should be in this specific case. (carrying capacity and not murderhoboing all your foes I'm assuming are not facets you'd call out with a "guys, guys, no, that loophole breaks my game" response )

I'm not saying I'm right, of course, and some people do want to play in those games. Which is why I think including the OOC conversation is an important part of it, even if I paper over it with an IC justification.

100%. I'm not a rail fan, but modules inherently get a little linear, especially if it's a series of them. And that's fine (again, not my cuppa but no BadWrongFun), but I think it's important to clarify, OOC, the parameters of the game when it's clear there's a mismatch.

I can definitely handle a rails game easier if I've been told up front it's a rails game, as I can set my expectations.

And again and again with the having the right mindest. You make it look easy.

especially in a 'I think my action should work' case, centers things on that one player rather than on the group.

Spotlight sharing? I feel that's an odd take, but OK.

First, I feel that "table discussions" are a place where everyone can contribute. In particular, at some tables, just all the players getting behind an idea is all it takes for a GM to "rule of cool" allow it. Not my personal style, mind you, just the most obvious "everyone is participating is a requirement for 'everyone wants this' style of rulings" example to show that everyone can participate in such things.

Second, "I want to do cool thing" seems like a really good place for a player to take their share of the spotlight. So, if we're ever gonna focus on a player, I'd prefer that over most of the standard alternatives ("you got the killing blow!", "the Rogue goes off and scouts for hours" / Shadowrun (X-1)/X of the time thumb-twiddling, "talky bits" where only 1 player interacts (or, worse, where the GM only allows 1 player to interact), etc), both for value and duration of the spotlight.

So, afaict, bringing up spotlight sharing just makes me say, "yes, please!" to table discussions of a proposed action.

See this I think starts from a good place, but then it kind of follows a path to what I'd consider an error. Yes, communication is the job. But that's communication, *not* persuasion. And while teaching can be good, sometimes its unwelcome or even outright inappropriate.

Maybe it's me being loose with my words and concepts. To me, communication, persuasion, teaching? They're all "talky bits"; so long as we all end up happily on the same page, I care little which route we take. Note that the fallback plans when we cannot get to that shared space though understanding are "everyone pulls out their (verbal) clue-by-fours and beats the ignoramus with them until they admit they're an ignoramus and submit", or the even worse, "let's just do something stupid for now and discuss it later" (more on that one below).

And, because I think it fits better here, even if it ties into things below, I'll go ahead and add that... when evaluating a new action, I *start* with physics/realism. And that's important.

See, one could start with, say, game balance, and then attempt to back-port that into completely random disassociated rules, but IME that's just dumb. It never works out in a way that satisfies, well, most anyone I play with, and certainly not me.

Instead, I start with "what are you attempting", "how should this work", and try to translate that into game rules.

That has the result of everything having what I'll call a consistent, memorable, "I can see how you got here" feel to it, like Knowledge: Nature letting you choose an easier to climb tree reducing the DC of the Climb check being a ruling where you can follow the thought process, in a way "number of spellbooks gives a synergy bonus to climb checks" (for balance reasons, because spellbooks are heavy) doesn't.

So "convince me" not only is good on its own merits, but can also be, "convince me that some other consideration (game balance, spotlight sharing, character concept ("really, you're a Dragon Grappler?"), whatever) should be taking priority over my presumed focus of realism/consistency/verisimilitude".

Or, to put it in perhaps the most approachable way, explaining to me why you think something should work will (hopefully) reveal your thought process, and (hopefully) reveal the disconnect, be it a material or stylistic one.

Because "I grapple hook the dragon to keep it from moving" produces a "the ****?" response, which, as I've mentioned in other threads, is a sign of a disconnect that needs to be addressed.

alignment

Yeah, you lost me on this one. I hate alignment, so it'd be a good pick for trying to write a convincing argument for me, except I just don't see the relevance in this case. I'm guessing it was intended to parallel a position you want me to reevaluate, but I'm guessing you're arguing against a position I don't actually hold, and that's why it's just not sticking the landing?

There's a time and a place, and being careful of those is going to be important for the plus side of things. A simple and really powerful move is to say 'lets talk about this after game' when there are larger things that need to be untangled.

So I've finally figured out why I have such a visceral HATE reaction to that concept: because when people implement it IRL, it basically translates to, "I'm a narcissistic moron who has a stupid idea that nobody would ever accept if they actually thought about it, and I either don't care or actively want all the detrimental effects to (your) possessions, status, and/or health that following this stupid plan blindly will result in".

So, going forward, my response to anyone suggesting such things in game is, "Oh, if it doesn't matter to you if we do it correctly or not because it can just be retconned later, then let's go with my way until we discuss it after the game, OK?" That preserves your momentum, and my sanity and engagement. Perfect plan?

For something like the OP's situation, the way I'd handle it if trying to run 'normal' D&D would probably be to say something like: 'If you do that action, I'm going to run it as an attack with an improvised ranged weapon the size of the grapple head, so you might do 1d4 bashing damage or something if you hit AC but the grapple will just bounce off; if you crit and confirm then its piercing and the hook will be latched in, but the dragon can dislodge it with a Move action at the cost of taking the attack damage again; for what you're trying to do, the appropriate weapon would be a net; and a net doesn't grapple, it entangles and permits an unopposed strength check to just break out, just so you know for the future.' I'm not trying to argue that its physically realistic (mistake IMO), I'm not trying to enter into a debate with the player about what the best possible way to run this would be (because that loses the momentum of the fight and takes spotlight from others). However I *am* trying to communicate clearly how I will run things if the player goes ahead with the action, keeping in mind their intent.

If the player wants to discuss alternate approaches, that's fine - its the gameplay. If the player wants to argue 'no, you should run it my way', then 'for now I'm running it this way, lets talk after game if this is really important to you'. That talk may not be a physics debate. More likely than not, its going to be me explaining similar things to what I'm saying now, that in a fight situation momentum of play is important, abstraction is to be expected, my priority is to make good enough rulings and move things forward rather than spend an hour figuring out how to model penetrating wounds in D&D, and that things like increasing the resolution of the combat model are what I use the time between campaigns for rather than the time at the table - they're welcome to pitch the idea that next we play a hyper-realistic system, and even help me design it.

Did you just... casually suggest the thing I just came up with after struggling with for years (or decades)? Or am I just reading it that way because I just came up with it? Or did you just give the standard, "I don't care if it's stupid, we can retcon it later" response?

Also, I agree that "realism" isn't the only criteria (no, not even realism + consistency) - things like "game balance" are also concerns to take into account when adjudicating undefined areas of the rules.

And like, if after saying the offhand thing about how a Net is the appropriate weapon in bog-standard D&D the player responded with 'well actually, with a net you can also hold something in place with an opposed strength check' I'd say 'that may be so, but you don't have a net, lets move on' and not get into a rules debate about whether e.g. the opposed strength check could be bypassed by making the break DC of the rope in the hypothetical that this was a net instead of a grapple. That would definitely be a player trying to detach from the fight and just debate rules, and that's unfair to the other players.

No more unfair than "a combat" - they can all participate if they want to. And they should want to - it's the health of the game and the happiness of the players that are the Stakes.

That said, I agree nets have (onerous) "movement restriction" rules, that grappling hooks do not have "net" rules text attached, and that a good default stance is that that absence (and the general game difficulty of the action via nets) means something.

Now if I were running a more high-powered, super-hero/demigod/wuxia/action movie kind of game (which honestly is actually closer to my normal), I'd probably just let the OP's thing work but fix the problems in my narration. E.g. no, piercing the wing with a grapple and then expecting to hold the dragon is nonsense but I don't need to give a physics lecture about that, instead its just "Okay, you hurl the grapple with such force it not only punctures the wing, but wraps around the dragon's body and ends up getting lodged against their horns! Oh by the way, the free end is receding fast as the dragon thrashes - you could grab it, I'll let that go as a non-action, but you probably need to secure it to yourself in a way that isn't going to be so easy to get free of - want to tie your fate together with it?". Essentially 'yes,but', because it keeps the action fluid and narrative, not because its necessarily physically the most correct thing. Zany stuff just works, but I get to throw in complications, and you can accept or reject and we move on.

It sounds like my ignorance of how wings work results in a similar "what I expect this to have to look like" as what you just described.

Which seems a good time to mention: I'm fine with one PC doing something cool like this. I just write my headcanon such that they did something phenomenally one-in-a-trillion improbable and cool like that, and that explains why this isn't Standard Imperial Procedure, why nobody ever actually attempts something like that. I'm even fine with one PC being so Wuxia that they can do so repeatedly - I'm really glad I teamed up with them, they're awesome! But unless the setting makes that level of awesome an expected norm, I start losing traction when multiple people can do that same thing that sounds as unrealistic as "grappling hook the dragon" both did to me and you make it sound.

So, in the case of the runes magic system, there's a signal there which is absent in the OP's case. Namely, if I put a system like that in front of a player, I'm actually saying 'the gameplay here is playing a magical engineer'. I'm *explicitly inviting* that. Hopefully I would only do that if the players as a group were interested, but that's a failing I know about myself - I would totally put that in there even if its only going to appeal to one player. So practically speaking, what I should do is again 'lets talk after game and hash out the details then, so other people don't sit here for 2 hours while we nerd out about magical physics'. Would I do that? Ehh, I never claimed to be a +10 GM... I'd probably mess this up more often than I should.

You're confusing me more and more in this thread.

So, if only 1 player connects with a particular subsystem, that's great! That makes it clear that that subsystem has built-in nich-protection for that player. Whether that subsystem is "runes", "combat", "talk to the nobility", "talk to <this PC>'s family", "interact with <that PC's love interest>", "investigation", "puzzles", "anything to do with religion", or what have you. That makes it really easy to balance the spotlight and ensure everyone gets a chance to shine.

What you're calling a problem I think of as part of the solution.

Granted, that mostly only works if you develop a playstyle optimized to make it a solution, in a group with enough common interests to make those the focus of the campaign - or at least the bulk of the time spent at the table during the campaign, which are not the same things. Otherwise, you can get Shadowrun thumb-twiddling.

And the point of bringing up Runes was, what if the Runes were an inconsistent jumble, where the GM clearly didn't care about making their rules make any sense. Wouldn't that have detracted from the specific type of enjoyment you got out of Exploring that subsystem? It was simply a call to "even though there are other valid considerations, do your own experiences not give voice to the importance of consistency and thought-through rules?".

Nets are a thing at least in 3.5e, and the rules for nets make it pretty clear that a grapple isn't going to do very much... You have a 10ft range max, you have bad to-hit penalties if the net isn't in its proper 'ready to spring out' conformation, the net can be bypassed by a flat DC Strength check to break the ropes (oh and they just have 5hp), and even if all goes well you just entangle rather than grapple. Though you can prevent movement with a net if the captive doesn't use any of the various outs a net permits. A grapple is like a ... 1 strand net, sort of? Without the weighted edges, the ability to cover the entire body, and so on. So outside of a cinematic game, IMO this idea just doesn't work. But in a cinematic game it absolutely could work. So that's what I mean that its sort of the GM's call as to what kind of game they're running, and getting into the realism arguments or even the RAW arguments is kind of not the *real* reason for making a ruling and moving on. It actually acts counter to that, in that it can create the impression 'oh, this is the part of the game where I use my player skill at debate-the-GM to win'.

Which also is not necessarily badwrongfun, but as with the runic magic system, you probably want to signal that it's going to be that kind of game in advance rather than just accidentally find yourself running it (or worse, running it that way for one player while running it strictly for another player who isn't using the same OOC conversational strategies). Like the aforementioned Paranoia game where table debate is literally pleading your case to Friend Computer - well-signaled, so good to go.

I guess... although I kinda agree... if you haven't successfully covered what kind of game you're running in Session 0, then it sounds like a really good idea to me to hit the brakes, and work that out asap, with a discussion of how this will work and why wrt what kind of game is being run. Getting everyone on the same page is, IMO, the priority here. Otherwise, you get the situation the OP described, where both are getting increasingly frustrated with on another, because neither is using their words to discuss game style and expectations.

On a different note, "how and how well players engage in various minigames" (not just "convince me", but "play 20 questions with the GM", learn about an NPC rather than just "roll diplomacy", and so many others) has, I admit, begun to become a concern, and a balance concern. Still, player differentiation via "just presses game buttons" vs "thinks outside the box" is a feature, not a bug, it's the game operating as designed IMO. So I agree in the general case that it's something to watch for, but the specific case is IMO one the GM should generally already have balanced for before the game starts.

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To sum up the thrust of my reasoning on this issue:

So, for the record, I'm generally (and outspokenly) on the side of, "grappling hook to stop a dragon doesn't make a lot of sense to me" (and, secondarily and tertiary concerns, raises balance concerns, doesn't match existing rules structures, and might set some bad precedents). But if I had been a player in a game, and somehow thought that that made sense, and wanted to try it? Say, if NichG were the GM, and their post history led me to believe that they ran a high-wuxia game, or I was otherwise sold on an inaccurate vision of the type of game they were running? Then, although many comments, like "even nets in system aren't that good" or "catching the membrane will just do <negligible> damage before dislodging (otherwise this would be a standard tactic / because that matches the general rules structure / whatever reasoning)" would suffice to make me nod and smile and agree in this particular instance, I really feel that addressing that misconception is imperative for an enjoyable experience, to prevent the type of repeated clash of concepts we see in the OP.

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And, to poke the thread topic directly, I'm not generally a fan of what the OP described as "you can, but you can't". I'd like to think that, had I been GM, I would have asked the OP to explain their reasoning, found the disconnect, and had a discussion to get the OP on the same page wrt modules, rails, and the style of game I was running (where outside the box actions need to be "beekeepers use smoke to make bees docile" level of supported exceptions in order to outperform standard inside the box actions, and standard inside the box nets are weak) - and that maybe that would have happened much earlier in the night than the dragon grappling incident.

In practice... well, there's a whole series of rolls I'd need to have made, in order to have noticed the problem, evaluated it correctly, and said what I intended, so... my success rate wouldn't have been as high as I'd like. But in a perfect world, I'd like to think that's how I would have handled it.