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hyphz posted:That's exactly the problem, though. If there's a certain amount of IC-danger that's a social goal OOC with the group, how do you define it? Can it be exceeded by buffing the party? By making a powerful character that can defeat standard challenges without being in danger? Do the players then have to come up with an IC reason why they don't do, or do, certain things? a lot of this can be solved by just having the group understand that you are here to do dangerous things and fight monsters. if you're not down with doing that, then why are you at the table? i'm not replying to the content of your post because its ridiculous. use the game mechanics. if they're failing you, play a better game NumptyScrub posted:Speaking of getting bogged down in minutae... I think the discussion here is basically "should characters be deliberately doing dangerous things?" and the answer is that in game systems, it is conflict that promotes change. At a very basic level, if you want your character to change anything then you should be prepared for some form of conflict. Stuck in a house in a narrative focused game? Your goal is probably going to be "how do I leave this house and make a cool story out of it?", and then retcon that into your character's decision making process. "Open the front door and walk out" is an obvious way to leave the house, but it is a loving boring story. "Sneak a peek into the basement" is not leaving the house, but does open up all sorts of story potential. again, the base assumption of D&D is that you will be kicking in doors and slinging spells at monsters. this shouldn't be something we have to obsess over, but if it becomes a problem, stop the game and tell the player who isn't in the spirit of the game that they need to get with the program.
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May 18, 2018 19:37
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The solution of that should have been to make the barbarian keep drawing, rather than foisting it off on someone else
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May 18, 2018 19:38
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I love what happened in Critical Role when Grog (the goliath barbarian with INT 6) stumbled into getting a Deck of Many Things. Travis legitimately had no clue what it was because of his inexperience with D&D, but the entire rest of the table freaked out so badly that he tried to destroy it before getting stopped. And then he ended up roleplaying fully as Grog, which meant during the game's one-year timeskip he found a random drunk guy in an alley and got him to pull a card just to see what would happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RtrpEWTeqM&t=183s "Grog Strongjaw. Maker of kings."
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May 18, 2018 19:45
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Serf posted:a lot of this can be solved by just having the group understand that you are here to do dangerous things and fight monsters. if you're not down with doing that, then why are you at the table? If you have four choices: a) run away from the dungeon; b) buff yourselves then go in and fight the monsters; c) go in and fight the monsters without buffing; d) strip naked and throw your weapons in the bushes then go fight the monsters; a) is the best way of avoiding danger, but if deliberately seeking danger is an objective, then d) achieves it best. The problem is finding the correct boundary between them. In this case it is presumably b) but identifying a general rule for that in multiple situations can be tricky.
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May 18, 2018 19:54
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hyphz posted:If you have four choices:  it is never going to be a) or d) because the former defeats the purpose of the game and the latter is eye-bleedingly stupid and no one would ever do it. b) and c) are also stupid because if you've got buffs, you're going to use them, depending on whether or not it seems suitable if they're expendable or limited in some way
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May 18, 2018 19:59
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One cool feature in GURPS is that an Advantage you can get is Daredevil, which gives you a bonus to whatever you're doing as long as it's more dangerous than a choice you would ordinarily make. Like just being in a regular gunfight wouldn't give you a bonus, but leaping out from cover and charging as you fire or discarding your loaded gun to use a sword would give you a bonus. It encourages the player to actually make daring, maybe even potentially fatal decisions.
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May 18, 2018 20:00
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Tunicate posted:The solution of that should have been to make the barbarian keep drawing, rather than foisting it off on someone else RAW you state how many cards you're planning on drawing and you are forced to draw that many cards. And can never draw cards from that deck again. The dude was a terrible minmaxer and had basically built his entire character around having one item loadout and I straight up told him that I warned him, then tried to help him when he didn't listen to me, and suffered worse than him. Per my friend who was in that group he didn't get mad at anyone else, just the guy who died trying to help him out. I ended up rerolling to keep the game going but it was all downhill after that, particularly after a combat involving dopplegangers and some engineered party antagonism.
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May 18, 2018 20:00
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Kurieg posted:RAW you state how many cards you're planning on drawing and you are forced to draw that many cards. And can never draw cards from that deck again. ah, I was thinking of the classic one, which let you keep digging yourself deeper by drawing more and more cards
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May 18, 2018 20:08
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Honestly if I was your GM and the Barbarian had basically rage-quit, I'd retcon your draw and his looting because he purposely went against everyone's advice and kept badgering other people to fix his screw up. Granted, unless it's a prepublished adventure, I wouldn't even put a DOMT in my game because of how campaign-wrecking it is.
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May 18, 2018 20:19
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He didn't because the Barbarian's already begged the DM to retcon his own stupidity and he said no(he was apparently operating under the logic of "I'll draw from the deck for good things and anything campaign ending the DM will have to retcon). "Wouldn't be right for you to get a retcon when he didn't." Again, there's a reason I'm no longer with that playgroup. I was only there in the first place because of a pre-existing friend. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 20:27 on May 18, 2018 |
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May 18, 2018 20:23
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hyphz posted:If you have four choices: this is amazing
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May 18, 2018 20:25
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hyphz posted:If you have four choices: You remind me of that 13A flavor quote that says the guy who points out that Ochre Jellies come in a variety of colors and textures is statistically the guy that doesn't come home.
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May 18, 2018 21:55
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I've read this for too long without contributing, so here is my story. Don't know if it counts as either particularly good or bad, so if it doesn't fit here I'll get rid. First time I GMed in a while, the gaps might show. : Carson "the Dagger" Jagger, the half-orc rogue. Killed his abusive dad as a kid, became muscle for hire in the criminal underworld. : Symphony the Tiefling bard. Her mother is a succubus who seduced her way up the ranks of the Divine Empire, and was not a good mother. : Scruffy the half-elf ranger. Their player doesn't turn up much.quote:Altanzai! City of gold, danger and shadows! Make your fortune, lose your fortune, fall in love and get your throat slit! One guy did it all on the same day. There's a song about him. : Good job recently, hey? : Yeah, went well We're just heading to the break room. Have a pint, relax. You? We are also doing that thing. : To the break room! : Yep*both groups wait awkwardly to follow the other* quote:Following them to the treasure room, combat ensued, with the genuine remnants backing up the party against what appeared to be a small group of demon cultists. Symphony, however, got trapped against two real and quite angry remnants, and so pretended to be a kissagram before commencing to murder them. Let me know if you want to keep hearing, I'll have to hunt through my notes and type everything up eventually anyway e: readability, more info Ichabod Sexbeast fucked around with this message at 00:30 on May 19, 2018 |
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May 18, 2018 23:15
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CobiWann posted:I have no idea how to respond to this story. The amount of "I did nothing wrong" is simply STAGGERING. I feel like "Kiss my entire rear end" is a good response to the barbarian player at least.
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May 19, 2018 02:06
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Serf posted:again, the base assumption of D&D is that you will be kicking in doors and slinging spells at monsters. this shouldn't be something we have to obsess over, but if it becomes a problem, stop the game and tell the player who isn't in the spirit of the game that they need to get with the program. Yes, and the systems that Hyphz has mentioned were not DnD, and so may have different base assumptions than kicking in doors to kill mobs and grab loot, and pacifism or danger avoidance may actually be common or encouraged. He's taken the argument to literal extremes but the base premise of "deliberately adding more danger to a situation than you need to sounds a bit dumb" has some merit. The fact that game rules make conflict unavoidable in at least some form is what breaks the logic, because if you avoid conflict completely then it's a boring as gently caress game. Conflict is what adds the tension and makes things memorable, so you need to be able to rationalise your character seeking conflict whilst simultaneously having at least a basic survival instinct. DnD does it by making the conflict itself enticing; yeah you might get hosed up, but if you win then you get XP and loot as prizes. Nobody expects a DnD character to shy away from a fight unless you are seriously outgunned, because it's part of the basic story flow. Leading to idiots like me assuming that everything is surmountable, when sometimes that is not actually the case at all and oh poo poo it looks like I need to roll a new character, sorry guys. I will add that it is sometimes cathartic to deliberately play with gimped characters, which is arguably a subset of "deliberately adding more danger to the situation". Those times you are rolling stats for a new campaign and the dice are choosing to bend you over and make you their bitch; a previous DnD 5th ed character of mine had 12 as their highest stat and 4 were below 10, even though I was rolling 4d6 drop the lowest. DM immediately gave me the option to start from scratch (my equivalent points buy total was negative!), but I deliberately chose to stick with it to see how long they would actually survive. It's actually a shame that the campaign only lasted 3 or 4 sessions due to DM RL commitments, because I was genuinely enjoying playing a total klutz for a change  If I was playing a "good" character I would be expecting to achieve victory, playing a klutz made every little win feel like an achievement. I'm actually tempted to suggest this to my group and see if I can get some buy in for a "the other guys" type campaign, where all the PCs have terrible stats but get forced into the limelight because plot reasons...
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May 19, 2018 03:39
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Rorac posted:I feel like "Kiss my entire rear end" is a good response to the barbarian player at least. My initial reaction, honestly, was that he was lucky that the dumbfuck just left on his own. I come here expecting stories of woe, but usually the woebringers stick around for far too long. All things considered, this is practically a happy ending.
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May 19, 2018 04:33
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JustJeff88 posted:My initial reaction, honestly, was that he was lucky that the dumbfuck just left on his own. I come here expecting stories of woe, but usually the woebringers stick around for far too long. All things considered, this is practically a happy ending. Well I can try to fulfill your expectations. After my character died I rerolled a gunslinger, styled as a bounty hunter investigating the disappearance of my character (Bastard half-elf son of a noble, cared about but not publicly) As something of a jab at the Barbarian's player, but he never showed up to the game. Yes this was probably a dumb thing to do but I was also in an antagonistic mood after the poo poo he pulled and the DM's refusal to reign it in. The only thing I remember about that session(which ended up being the last session of that campaign) was that we were wandering down a hall of mirrors, and suddenly we were following a group of exact duplicates of ourselves. Or were we being followed by duplicates? We didn't know! The DM wouldn't tell us which group of characters were actually us! Also we might have been mixed up between the two groups. And whenever we gave our stated actions he randomly decided which one of the two 'us-es' would perform the action. So it eventually just devolved into us attacking ourselves over and over again after my attempt to speed things up with my shotgun ended up almost killing the party rogue. Or did it? I don't know! IT'S SO MYSTERIOUS! The campaign stopped after that because the DM had lost the plot without the Barbarian's character, and I think he only dragged it on through the last session because he didn't know the Barbarian wasn't going to show up and he really wanted to run his new pet encounter. Then the DM started up a 2nd edition game that I only attended one session of because I had no idea what I was doing, wasn't really having fun, and kept on getting badgered by the DM that I obviously was doing it wrong because "2e is so much better, Matt! You'll love it once you figure it out!" No gaming is better than bad gaming my dudes.
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May 19, 2018 05:55
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NumptyScrub posted:Yes, and the systems that Hyphz has mentioned were not DnD, and so may have different base assumptions than kicking in doors to kill mobs and grab loot, and pacifism or danger avoidance may actually be common or encouraged. He's taken the argument to literal extremes but the base premise of "deliberately adding more danger to a situation than you need to sounds a bit dumb" has some merit. The system that started this whole discussion was D&D 5e. He's a loving moron. Anyways, here's the story of how a simple fact-finding mission went horribly wrong, causing massive property damage and getting the attention of the cops The game: Blades in the Dark The Characters: The Pallbearers are a group of Bravos who have 4 members. Ashen Crow (Leech), the tycherosi veteran of the Unity War. Former field medic and now bomb-tossing criminal engineer. Finni Gyles (Cutter), street hooligan turned professional criminal with a specialty in punching ghosts. Herrik Vanir (Slide), an upjumped tycherosi with a silver tongue and a taste for the finer things in life. Veretta Jīngshén (Whisper), a deposed Skovlan noble with mystical power and a drive to get her status back. The scene: an open-air fighting pit on the waterfront owned by the Dockers, the criminal faction who control the piers of Duskwall. Finni had worked for weeks to infiltrate the fighting pit, rising up through the ranks and eventually becoming the pit champion. All this was part of his plan to find a way to take control of the pit and push the Dockers out. With his infiltration successful, the rest of the team came along to gather information for their score. Herrik arrived first, grabbing a spot in the stands to observe that happened to be right next to Bazso Baz, the leader of the Lampblacks, another gang, and Herrik's enemy. After a little banter and trading of barbs, Herrik moved off, with a tail from Baz keeping an eye on him. He was joined by Ashen Crow and Veretta while Finni took the fighters entrance and got a warm reception. One of the guards let Finni know about a new attraction: a demon pulled right from the sea. Apparently the plan was to have Finni fight it, something that he wasn't exactly keen on. He headed to the basement to have a look at the demon and have a word with the leader of the Dockers, Ox Ahuja, about a proposition that he had. Veretta opened her mind to the ghost field to look for advantages and discovered the presence of the demon, and realized that it felt very similar to a demon the group had accidentally released a few weeks ago. Reporting this to the rest of the group, they decided to go into the basement as well. Finni was able to get right in with his status, and headed down into the fighting pit basement, which used to be a loading and unloading area for cargo coming off of boats in the harbor. It was built around a central metal column, and the "floor" was mostly made of boats that had been lashed together and covered with wooden pallets to create an uneven and slightly mobile surface. In the middle, built around the pillar, was a large holding cell that the Dockers had created to hold prisoners and traitors, and using a system of chains and pulleys it could be lowered down into the water. Inside it was the demon: a hulking seven-foot humanoid icthyoid with the face of an angler fish and nasty claws. Finni deflected Ox's proposal that he fight it, and made a counter proposal: give Finni control of the fighting pit and they could work together to open more pits for franchising. At that moment, Herrik distracted the stairs guard by using a disembodied finger from an iruvian (long story), and Ashen Crow and Veretta managed to slip past him. However, they whiffed their group Prowl roll and were noticed by the demon, which raged against the bars of the holding cell. I had a player make a fortune roll to see how well the demon did in breaking open the cage (but I didn't tell them that) and they rolled a crit. Ashen Crow slipped into a flashback to almost this exact scene in the Unity War and in the confusion he did what he does best: tossed two grenades into the crowd of Dockers and Finni. He rolled pretty well and we made another fortune roll to see if Ox would make it. Finni resisted and spent armor to just get blown off his feet, but Ox went flying through a week spot in the floor and down into the bay. The rest of the Dockers got shredded and the demon broke free of the cage and charged at Ashen Crow and Veretta. Above, Herrik lost the attention of the guard, attempted to knock him out, failed and then was forced to drive his fingers into the guard's eye, sending him tumbling down the stairs with Herrik following. Veretta blasted the demon with lightning, knocking it off balance and sending it flying across the room, taking out support columns as it tumbled across the patchwork floor. As it regained its footing and charged again, Herrik decided use his ability to talk to demons to converse with it, talking to it like it was a puppy. For once, his silver tongue failed and as a result the demon backhanded him so hard that he was sent flying out of the basement and out into the bay. Finni rolled into the water to grab Ox, and realized afterwards that he couldn't find the way out again and began to run short on breath as the demon reached the stairs. Ashen Crow took off, pushing his way through the crowd to get away while Veretta unspooled the razor wire around her lightning hook and wielded it like a whip, tangling up the demon's clawed arm and earning herself a nasty cut in the process. Above them, Ashen Crow scrambled over to the big generator that was powering the lights around the pit and placed a few explosive charges under it. Leaping away, he hit the radio transmitter and blew the floor, dropping the generator, which was as big as an industrial freezer, through the floor and right onto the demon. It slammed into the demon and smashed it through the floor into the water, taking Veretta's lightning wire with it. At that time, the Spirit Wardens, called by the deaths of the Dockers, arrived. They were wrapped in black cloth strips and wore golden masks. There was a wolf, an octopus and an assassin bug. Finni managed to find his way out through the hole Ashen Crow just made, and narrowly avoided being bitten by a bay shark in the process. The Spirit Wardens set to gathering the bodies while one jumped into the new hole to follow the demon. Ashen Crow slipped out and Veretta managed to force her way past the Bluecoats with an imperious attitude, but Finni was forced to remain behind and give a statement, selling out Ashen Crow in the process. Afterwards, the group reconvened in their crumbling abandoned mansion in Six Towers to discuss what happened. As they argued, a demon named Setarra, who they had helped in the past, arrived to congratulate them on unwittingly advancing her agenda. As a reward, she offered to grant them one wish. They agreed that they would like to have the cops off their backs (they were at Wanted Level 2), and Setarra agreed, disappearing. They then decided to fix up the fighting pits as a long-term project, and continue their feud with the Graycloaks for their next score. After shaking down a junkie for information, the group realized that they were being treated with far more fear than before. It turns out that Setarra's "aid" came in the form of tearing through an entire station house of Bluecoats and leaving a stylized coffin painted on the walls, clearly an oblique reference to the Pallbearers. All in all, a great and weird session of Blades that just kept escalating, which is a common theme I'm noticing in both games of it I'm running. I love how the system runs, and this is where we're at right now in terms of clocks that are ticking down to things getting even more complicated 
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May 19, 2018 15:51
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Re: expectations, it's kind of interesting how people handle being told the game's set up. I've got a game I'm running right now where the players are space pirates piloting giant robots to fight other giant robots and spaceships and take their loot. We explicitly discussed the core and focus in our session zero, where I brought up how the majority of the game is about them acquiring loot via taking it by force from other people with their death machines. All the players said they were on board with this, and set about making their characters. But out of the five, only four bothered designing their mechs. The fifth when I prodded her said "Oh, I'm just going to be party face and be a gunslinger on foot. I don't even want a vehicle." Even after I pointed out that this meant they'd be missing out on the core of the game. And the about 95% of the book was taken up by mecha design and mecha combat rules. I mean, I'm rolling with it — showed them some ways they could participate in the mech combat portions (including designing them a ludicrously large anti-mech sniper rifle that's almost as expensive as a tank, but would let them actually deal any damage and stay out of harms way), etc. But it's still an interesting facet that for some people the answer to "this is what the game is about" is "how do I do my best to circumvent this?"
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May 19, 2018 21:15
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Holy hell. I just caught up with the thread. It took me hours, but that's what I get for leaving it unread for a few months. I'm fishing for ideas for a series of articles I'm writing for my blog. The blog is a home for a few different columns I've had in mind about nerd poo poo, and one of them is about taking semi-deep dives into different aspects of GMing, using anecdotes as a way to discuss them. I won't spam the thread with links unless asked, but I can provide them if people want examples. But are there any topics in or challenges to running games that people are curious about exploring in some depth?
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May 19, 2018 21:20
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It sounds cool but it might be more suited to somewhere like the GM Advice thread. This one is more focused on anecdotes either about campaigns or terrible nerds and the campaigns they ruin.
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May 19, 2018 23:00
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Razorwired posted:It sounds cool but it might be more suited to somewhere like the GM Advice thread. This one is more focused on anecdotes either about campaigns or terrible nerds and the campaigns they ruin. Oh, dang. Yeah! I'll go post over there. Thanks!
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May 20, 2018 00:51
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I think you were missing something, don't worry, I fixed it. 
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May 20, 2018 01:04
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Tonight I got together with some friends to start up a Vampire: The Masquerade campaign. The host had trouble describing his character's style of clothing so he put an episode of Angel on the TV so he could show us what he meant. Long story short, Vampire is out and we are now playing a team of super powered luchadores who criss cross the country on a ghost locomotive, rescuing small communities from supernatural threats.
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May 20, 2018 05:08
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You're better off, tbqfh. V:tM is terrible.
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May 20, 2018 06:28
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Be Keegan-Michael Key's character in the Sexy Vampires Sketch if you get roped into V:tM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXpxnxAL62A
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May 20, 2018 08:50
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I introduced the Quiet Year to my game group today, and it went incredibly well. I set up a scenario--on a world with lots of different alien species, remnants of several devastated communities flee to a lush valley with a mysterious castle at its center--and made three changes to the basic rules: 1. At the beginning, while we each contributed geographical features, I also said we should each describe the kind of people who moved in. So our new town was humanoid mushrooms, bee people, living rocks and moles. 2. I added a Mystery Box, which had three pieces of paper with elements from the previous game, folded up so the players couldn't see what was on them. In summer, as a special action they could pick a paper from the box and it would give the community a bonus carried over from a previous one shot. 3. I didn't tell them about the frost shepherds. I mentioned that the game would end abruptly in winter, and early on someone joked "OK, this card says everyone dies, game over" and I had to bite my lip. When someone drew the King of Winter, everyone lost their drat minds. It was perfect. Other highlights: pink sasquatches came into the valley and the community befriended them via go kart racing them, kids started using lasers to rave (a surprising amount of bad stuff happened to them, but for unrelated reasons), one of the living rocks deanimated itself so that people could make things out of its ore. I'm going to run a more traditional campaign in this setting (in Strike!) and I'm so glad that this is what our list of PC races is.
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May 20, 2018 10:28
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hyphz posted:If you have four choices: The core assumption of a game is that you engage with the game. If the game has started with the GM saying how excited they are to run a dungeon module, or indeed you're playing D&D at all, the game you have chosen to play is probably wandering through a dungeon. Not wandering through the dungeon is failing to engage with the game. Making a character that would not try to enter the dungeon is failing to engage with the game. Trying to get through the dungeon with a high ratio of good things happening to you vs bad things happening to you is engaging with the game, because that's what a dungeon crawl is all about. Now, you're probably thinking of all the times we've made fun of a GM for railroading. But if you look closer at those stories, we're making fun of GMs because: a) They didn't let the players know the story they had planned, and got pissy when the players did perfectly sensible things that weren't reading the GM's mind. b) They didn't let the players know the story they had planned, and so the players made characters completely unsuited to the intended story. c) The story they had planned was dumb and creepy. d) A myriad of other reasons dependent on context. So it's not about "Maximising danger". It's about engaging with the core concept of what is being played. It's about accepting the premise. If you understand the concept of suspension of disbelief, it's the same principle. It's the difference between going to a zombie film and complaining about poor characterisation or poor character motivation or what have you, and going to a zombie film and complaining about corpses walking around eating people. Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:42 on May 20, 2018 |
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May 20, 2018 11:38
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Splicer posted:So it's not about "Maximising danger". It's about engaging with the core concept of what is being played. It's about accepting the premise. If you understand the concept of suspension of disbelief, it's the same principle. It's the difference between going to a zombie film and complaining about poor characterisation or poor character motivation or what have you, and going to a zombie film and complaining about corpses walking around eating people. Ok, so let's look at the original post. The PCs were invited into a mysterious house and follow a guy in. The guy presumably disappears (the OP didn't mention that point), and the PCs are attacked by animated statues. They then discover that the front door has locked behind them and the house extends into a dungeon. Rather than enter the dungeon, they beat on the locked front door until they can summon someone to open it from the other side. Now, this does not seem to be disengagement to me. We are not told what was in the invitation, but in what is suggested the presented premise of the adventure is that it is about escaping from the house. If the PCs were not warned that the house was dangerous, anyone who sent them there is clearly trying to trap them. There is no suggestion that the dungeon leads to an exit. So the issue here isn't about not engaging with the premise, it's about deliberately taking a more dangerous course of action because that is the standard for what PCs do in the game. Now, alright, in this situation it's probably OK. No-one else can see them, and we don't know if the GM was such an rear end in a top hat he'd later have someone say "why didn't you just try to open the door?" to them. At the same time, though, if we're talking about it as a principle for the PCs to follow in all games where that's a premise, that means it can come up in situations like "we're looking for the Wonderful Crystal, there's one route through an empty forest and another route through a dungeon full of monsters, we'll go the dungeon route". I'm really surprised with the "story/fiction first" attitude that people seem to take, that at the same time they'll make game premises an excuse for crummy framing. Part of the reason is that I also recently read a story in r/rpghorrorstories on Reddit about a Pokemon game which was supposed to be about the players working their way up in a criminal organization. One of the players had a Porygon and ordered it to hack the organization's network, to his surprise, the GM ruled that there was no security! The player promptly stole a bunch of information, walked up to the big boss at their introduction event, and demanded control of the organization in exchange for not releasing it. The GM gave it to them and ended the campaign. Yet everyone blamed the GM for that. By the same logic, isn't that also failing to take the course of action which is the agreed mode of play, which would presumably involve working their way up gradually? Same thing in the Shadowrun game I ran. If we're doing action Cyberpunk that's meant to have awesome gunfights, isn't it the case that the players shouldn't choose to have their PCs just besiege an enemy gang in a warehouse and wait them out? What's the actual borderline here?
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May 20, 2018 15:04
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hyphz posted:Ok, so let's look at the original post. Firstborn posted:The DM begins by saying, "I have spent all day tweaking this dungeon to get it right, I can't wait".
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May 20, 2018 15:26
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Hyphz, the guy is a tool for not accepting the "door shuts behind you" trope as a cue to engage with the area you are now trapped in.
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May 20, 2018 15:29
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Look we all bitch about railroading, but if a player refuses to even get involved with the basics of the game - why the gently caress are they even there?, that's like signing up for baseball and parking your rear end on the bleachers for the entire season. You can still play the reluctant I don't wanna be here-type hero in D&D and still have them get involved, but if one player goes 'It's not in character and it's too stupid to go into the creepy dungeon', that's not only going to piss of the GM, but every other player at the table who has to pick up the slack and actually wants to play.
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May 20, 2018 15:46
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Firstborn posted:The DM begins by saying, "I have spent all day tweaking this dungeon to get it right, I can't wait". Splicer posted:Done. Yet in that whole day he never considered to change the framing to "holy poo poo a DUNGEON just showed up through a door in my house, I'm not going down there, I need someone who will?" Again, I've seen variants on the same story posted many times blaming the GM. So who is the responsibility actually correctly with?
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May 20, 2018 15:51
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Also while I was pulling up the original post, I found this:Serf posted:how is one of the base assumptions of the hack-and-slash rpg not "you will create a character who has a motivation that gets them to go into dangerous situations" drilled into people by now? like, it should just be assumed, but maybe there needs to be a talk at the beginning of games that covers this. hyphz posted:The subtleties need to be clarified. Does the same thing apply to a party who casts buffs on themselves before entering combat, with intent to make the combat not be dangerous? "Today we are running The Spooky Mine Filled with Mine Ghosts. Here are your characters. You are outside a spoooky mine." Sir Gallant: "We go in and look for treasure and ghosts!" or "Did we pass any towns on our way here? Can I spend some of my starting cash on Holy Water?" Knave Goofus: "Looks spooky. Let's head back to town." "You have encountered a MINE GHOST!" Sir Gallant: "I ain't afraid of no ghost!" or "I ain't afraid of no ghost... now that I have poured holy water all over myself and equipped the amulet from the last room." or "I am very afraid of this ghost. I am going to try to sneak around it and keep looking for treasure." or "I am curious about this ghost. I ask him why he is haunting this mine. Does he want to haunt this mine? Can we help him move on?" Knave Goofus: "I run back out of the mine and go home." Ignite Memories posted:Hyphz, the guy is a tool for not accepting the "door shuts behind you" trope as a cue to engage with the area you are now trapped in.
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May 20, 2018 15:52
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hyphz posted:Yet in that whole day he never considered to change the framing to "holy poo poo a DUNGEON just showed up through a door in my house, I'm not going down there, I need someone who will?" Also, nice goalpost shifting. We've now clearly presented when and how it was made clear that this was supposed to be a dungeon crawl, so your entire "Yeah but they didn't know know" argument is invalid.
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May 20, 2018 15:59
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if the point is that the DM should have eventually said "YOU loving IDIOTS GO INTO THE DUNGEON" instead of trying to narratively nudge the players into doing so, then sure, some responsibility lies with the DM in being clearer about their language (and insofar as there is intensely damaging tendency in RPGs for people to never want to break kayfabe).
gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 16:06 on May 20, 2018 |
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May 20, 2018 16:02
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Splicer posted:Presumably the guy knew about the dungeon and this would become relevant later. We'll never know though. They didn't have any IC material that enabled them to create a coherent story without "Oh no, an ordinary house door closed behind us, let us go into this likely horribly dangerous cellar where we may get killed". Again, with folks here seeming to be really into story-driven play, the blame seems to be in a strange place.
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May 20, 2018 16:04
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it's the GM's job to present the adventure, it's the player's job to go through the adventure and want to do poo poo in it - the GM of course will take suggestions and will adjust it to make it more fun for the players. The GM shouldn't have to chase over Goofus the Grey to actually do something, anything besides loving off and getting shitfaced or collapsing the entire point of the adventure. AGAIN if Hyphz, if you signed up for Baseball or Soccer, and refuse to get your rear end off the bleachers to play after they go through the effort of getting your uniform, your name in the line up and processing the registration, of course everyone else is going to mad. Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 16:07 on May 20, 2018 |
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May 20, 2018 16:05
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So did you swear to never see a movie in your life or have you simply dodged all of them up until now by accident.
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May 20, 2018 16:07
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hyphz posted:They didn't have any IC material that enabled them to create a coherent story without "Oh no, an ordinary house door closed behind us, let us go into this likely horribly dangerous cellar where we may get killed". Again, with folks here seeming to be really into story-driven play, the blame seems to be in a strange place. You're mixing up character-driven and story-driven. They're related! But not the same. Character-driven: all decisions are made in-character and only consistent actions are taken. Story-driven: all decisions are made with the criterion that the narrative be more engaging. This often includes wanting characters to be more complex and consistent than murderhobos, but it also includes 'the game narrative of action and adventure actually happens, so any character traits that would prevent that should be second-guessed or tweaked., You seem to think the 'principle' in question is about character bravery, and how foolhardy characters should be. It's not. The principle is how willing to suspend disbelief players should be, and to make character decisions in line with the genre and context of the game. Yes, the dungeon in question has a bare-bones excuse for why the players are entering it. You know what? That doesn't matter when the point of the game is a dungeon crawl. Frankly, you could run a D&D dungeon starting in the antechamber and just say 'you all decided to raid this dungeon for treasure and excitement, you were bored and financially desperate' and any player who tried to walk their character back out is really obviously not interested in the game being run. We will never know if the hidden house dungeon was going to be good; we do know that 'convince the players to actually play the game' is a lovely expectation for GMs to live up to. Edit: the story is not inherently focused on why the players went into the dungeon. D&D is action-adventure, dungeon crawls are the equivalent of just watching the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The framing device for 'you're in a dungeon now' only matters for how it sets the mood and most of the time it's going to be pretty flimsy. Otherwise it wouldn't be a dungeon crawl. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 16:22 on May 20, 2018 |
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May 20, 2018 16:19
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