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hyphz posted:And how risky does that roll have to be? The players will instantly spot that the best strategy is to seek out the lowest risk rolls that still count, which is guaranteed to cause problems about what the threshold is. Does a roll to avoid a trap which chops off your legs count as much as a roll to understand an ancient language? If one of those types doesn't count, how many counting rolls does the GM have to provide compared to non-counting rolls? If they use a wooden pole to trigger the trap thus avoiding it without a roll, does that make it not count, so they should jump into the trap even though they all know it's a bad idea? the most common roll will be a risky roll with a standard effect, which translates to 2 ticks on the clock if you succeed. if players attempt to get controlled rolls then that should be hard to pull off or involve a reduction to limited effect, which is 1 tick, making it take longer to complete the task with reduced risks but also more chances to make your position worse. but even when bad things happen, the players have the choice of making a resistance roll and just nullifying it completely, costing them stress, which could cause them to take a trauma but it all follows from the fiction. for instance, a trap would probably be a result of a partial success or failed roll. it would deal harm, unless the player chose to resist it. so essentially you don't roll to avoid a trap, you either choose to let the trap hit you or resist and see what it costs you in stress, which means that it wouldn't count as a tick on a clock. now if the trap is a known quantity, then consequences for not rolling a 6 when dealing with it could be harm, which could be resisted, or maybe the trap makes sound that arouses suspicion from security, which you could also resist. and in the situation where the trap is something you know about and have to deal with, then yeah it would tick the clock if you were rolling to overcome it. sounds like it would be a standard effect to me, so 2 ticks. and rolls only count against the clock if they're actually going to do something. if you're sneaking in to steal a ledger and one person happens to notice something written on a scrap of paper in an ancient language and rolls to understand it, then that's not going to get you anything on the clock. failing it might have some sort of effect on a danger clock, but probably not
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Jan 7, 2018 20:59
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Serf posted:the most common roll will be a risky roll with a standard effect, which translates to 2 ticks on the clock if you succeed. if players attempt to get controlled rolls then that should be hard to pull off But how do you make it hard, when if there’s nothing prewritten, the players all know they’re getting a controlled roll when you give them one? Do you make other rolls as part of the process? Because those will all plug into the probability equation...
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Jan 7, 2018 21:44
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hyphz posted:But how do you make it hard, when if there’s nothing prewritten, the players all know they’re getting a controlled roll when you give them one? the players would have to have taken the time and the care to set it up so that it would be controlled. maybe through the use of a flashback action or using up some of their load on an item that would give them a better position. sometimes a flashback action will require an action roll, or it could cost you coin instead, depending on what you're doing. and then the game encourages you to trade position for effect. you increase your risks for increased reward but it all flows from the fiction. you're having a conversation about what is going on, and the GM has the final say on some things, but in the end you're all there to tell a fun story about daring scoundrels pulling off risky jobs and getting into trouble. everything is driven by wanting to have that sort of story.
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Jan 7, 2018 21:58
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Serf posted:but it all flows from the fiction. you're having a conversation about what is going on, and the GM has the final say on some things, but in the end you're all there to tell a fun story about daring scoundrels pulling off risky jobs and getting into trouble. everything is driven by wanting to have that sort of story. That’s where I tend to trip up though. How can anything “flow from the fiction” if it’s not written yet? If the existing fiction says there’s a trap on that door, fine, it’s risky to open it. But you can’t “follow the fiction” to know when it is time to make up a trapped door. The desire to have qualities to the narrative is OK except that the system explicitly threatens to not have that kind of story if system based play is weak. A good heist story doesn’t end with “and then they spent three weeks and all the loot they got looking for a sawbones to set Donny’s broken arm”. Not unless it’s a morality story about how awful being a scoundrel is, which is Fiasco’s territory, not Blades’.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:20
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hyphz posted:That’s where I tend to trip up though. How can anything “flow from the fiction” if it’s not written yet? quote:If the existing fiction says there’s a trap on that door, fine, it’s risky to open it. But you can’t “follow the fiction” to know when it is time to make up a trapped door. I'm honestly curious why you think that can't be done.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:26
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follow the fiction is also used to mean "does it make sense". if you're robbing a bank then the bathrooms aren't rigged to an alarm but the vault probably is
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Jan 7, 2018 22:30
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hyphz posted:That’s where I tend to trip up though. How can anything “flow from the fiction” if it’s not written yet? If the existing fiction says there’s a trap on that door, fine, it’s risky to open it. But you can’t “follow the fiction” to know when it is time to make up a trapped door. things flow from the fiction because the GM and the players work together to establish the fictional situation together before you start getting into the details. you see some light fictional indicators in the faction descriptions for Blades. when you're trying to beat out the Fog Hounds for a smuggling job, that is going to be a lot easier than avoiding Church of Esctasy cultists after your cargo because the Fog Hounds are tier 1 while the Church is tier 4.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:31
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Evil Mastermind posted:You know that when people say "follow the fiction", they mean the stuff that's happening in-game as it's being played, right? In the case of a “trapdoor” which is just an interesting potential feature which is explorable without direct cost, yes, sure. But I said a “trapped door”, a door protected by a trap. That’s going to cause attrition and damage to the PCs. My making it up is arguably a bad thing for the players. If I’m going to do so “when it’s interesting” then one day the success of a heist will depend on it not being interesting, and the players will thus be rewarded for playing so that it isn’t.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:32
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hyphz posted:In the case of a “trapdoor” which is just an interesting potential feature which is explorable without direct cost, yes, sure. quote:But I said a “trapped door”, a door protected by a trap. That’s going to cause attrition and damage to the PCs. quote:My making it up is arguably a bad thing for the players. quote:If I’m going to do so “when it’s interesting” then one day the success of a heist will depend on it not being interesting, and the players will thus be rewarded for playing so that it isn’t. If I'm understanding what you're saying, you think that if I only create obstacles when they'd be "interesting", then the players will try to avoid "interesting" situations because that way I won't throw obstacles in their way, right? Except that the players also want interesting obstacles. That's where the fun of a game comes from: dealing with the back-and-forth of dealing with obstacles and being clever in overcoming them.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:45
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Contrary to the popular perceptions about PbtA games (including Blades) by people who have never run them or read the rules, there are specific rules governing when a GM can or should introduce an obstacle or complication. They're called soft moves and hard moves and they're triggered by specific things the players do. So even if there was something to this weird assertion about form following fiction, it's based on a flawed understanding of the rules PbtA games use.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:45
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hyphz posted:In the case of a “trapdoor” which is just an interesting potential feature which is explorable without direct cost, yes, sure.
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Jan 7, 2018 22:58
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Evil Mastermind posted:You know, hyphz, when you say things like this it really makes me think you've never actually played an RPG. Because this makes no sense at all. The players want interesting obstacles, but they also don't want to have their epic heist story end with "and then they screwed up and all got maimed". And every time the GM does the former, the system can potentially take over and introduce a dice-roll chance of the latter. I mean, my nightmare scenario for this was in a Shadowrun game when a player made a character with some ridiculous level of shooting ability - the highest the system allows I think; another made a mage etc. Since it's city/sandbox based I was having to adlib and was trying to go with the 'what makes sense' process but it was falling apart on that. Mages are 1% of the population, would a dive bar really have one on security? No, just like real clubs don't have packs of bouncers with tasers in case Andre the Giant shows up and starts trouble. They might have planned for someone with a gun, but does it make sense for them to have planned for someone who is the best sharpshooter in the universe to the point it is actually physically impossible to be better than him? No. That will almost never make sense. But that mage and sharpshooter are going to be in every encounter. Later on the player said "well, I'm a bit bored, it seems I just shoot everything". At that point I got frustrated and just shouted "you spent hours going over the books and working out your points to make sure your character would be able to shoot anything and everything, why are you complaining that it worked?" Needless to say that didn't go over well. And that's the problem, my experience with every real life group I've met is that the players might want to be challenged but they want to feel they're trying not to be.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:14
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Reene posted:Contrary to the popular perceptions about PbtA games (including Blades) by people who have never run them or read the rules, there are specific rules governing when a GM can or should introduce an obstacle or complication. They're called soft moves and hard moves and they're triggered by specific things the players do. Oh god, not those rules. Yea, the ones that say the GM gets to make a hard move when the "players look to them to see what happens next", which they arguably do all the time. And which is a truly lovely thing for the players to learn they are being penalized for. And the ones that make "use up their resources" a single move when resource management is meaningless if it's determined by how often the GM picks that option from an arbitrary list. They're the single worst part of the whole PbtA idea.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:17
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why was an ultra badass wizard and the world's best sniper hitting up some podunk divebar?
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Jan 7, 2018 23:18
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hyphz posted:Oh god, not those rules. Yea, the ones that say the GM gets to make a hard move when the "players look to them to see what happens next", which they arguably do all the time. And which is a truly lovely thing for the players to learn they are being penalized for. And the ones that make "use up their resources" a single move when resource management is meaningless if it's determined by how often the GM picks that option from an arbitrary list. They're the single worst part of the whole PbtA idea. No, you make hard moves when they roll under 6. You make soft moves when they look to you. They're not being punished, they're asking you to advance the plot. This already happens in games. It always happens. When the players have nothing to go off of to advance things, they rely on the GM to introduce a new element. Otherwise, the game would die there. Pbta simply spells it out. It is no more punishment then running a game for them being a punishment. The point of the game is to overcome challenges, if new challenges are not introduced, there is no game. Therefore, it is not a punishment to introduce new challenges, that is simply providing a gameplay experience.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:20
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Covok posted:No, you make hard moves when they roll under 6. You make soft moves when they look to you. They're not being punished, they're asking you to advance the plot. This already happens in games. It always happens. When the players have nothing to go off of to advance things, they rely on the GM to introduce a new element. Otherwise, the game would die there. Pbta simply spells it out. guys every time i walk into the tall grass in pokemon a monster jumps out and fights me, why did this game cover so much of the world in tall grass then punish me for walking in it?
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Jan 7, 2018 23:22
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hyphz posted:Oh god, not those rules. Yea, the ones that say the GM gets to make a hard move when the "players look to them to see what happens next", which they arguably do all the time. And which is a truly lovely thing for the players to learn they are being penalized for. And the ones that make "use up their resources" a single move when resource management is meaningless if it's determined by how often the GM picks that option from an arbitrary list. They're the single worst part of the whole PbtA idea. Sooooooo you didn't read the rules. Cool. I think I found your problem.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:25
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I think hyphz is coming from the school of classic D&D DMing where the DM was expected to be actively, assholeishly antagonistic towards the players and it was expected they would use DM fiat to punish players for not playing in a way they felt was correct (which was, incidentally, one of the behaviors that pre-set adventuring modules was meant to curtail, because it set limits on the DM and players alike). So with that in mind it's not really surprising that she'd be utterly baffled by PbtA, clearly not having read the rules aside, because the game both doesn't take that mindset and you literally cannot make an adventure module for because that's simply not how the game is written to work.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:27
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A soft move is " this happens, what do you do?" It is introducing a new challenge and you are expected to do it whenever the players run out of things to do. A hard move is " this happens" this is describing failure, but it should still move forward the plot. You should never simply stop the game. The failure should drive new challenges. But the real difference is that this is failure and you can't stop it from being a failure, even if you can do things afterwards. You failed to unlock the door and had to fight the guards, but you got a key off of them, for example. Soft moves and hard moves exist in every game. They are the backbone of GMing. They are two Core Concepts of game design put into words. They are introducing challenges for the players to solve and failure states that don't end the game so that there is risk. There must also be reward. Sometimes the reward can be mechanical like gold. Sometimes the reward can be narrative like being treated like Heroes by everyone you meet. Sometimes the reward is simply getting to do something the easy way. There must be reward to compensate for the risk. This is simply how games work. Pbta just spells it out.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:29
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hyphz posted:Oh god, not those rules. Yea, the ones that say the GM gets to make a hard move when the "players look to them to see what happens next", which they arguably do all the time. And which is a truly lovely thing for the players to learn they are being penalized for. And the ones that make "use up their resources" a single move when resource management is meaningless if it's determined by how often the GM picks that option from an arbitrary list. They're the single worst part of the whole PbtA idea.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:37
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hyphz posted:. Since it's city/sandbox based I was having to adlib and was trying to go with the 'what makes sense' process but it was falling apart on that. The key GMing insight of apocalypse world is fixing this antipattern. A player says 'I do X, what happens?' There are an infinite number of outcomes that plausibly follow from the current situation and make sense. However, if you reason in that direction you're really prone to picking a boring 'what makes sense' outcome - it's really easy to go 'well nothing interesting happens' or 'something happens that you don't know about', which produces boring gameplay. So the point of the GM move list is to invert your reasoning here. In the case where it's obvious what happens, that happens, you don't need GM moves. But if you're sitting there thinking 'what makes sense', you look down the list of GM moves and pick something that can plausibly follow from the current situation - and the key is that the GM moves don't include NOTHING HAPPENS. In any case both approaches end up with a completely consistent 'here is the situation, so this is what happens' chain of reasoning - the point is that as a GM you can just work backwards to produce the chain of logic so that you guarantee you produce an interesting result rather than a boring one. Remember that a hard move doesn't mean bad things happen to the PCs automatically - everything still has to follow from the current situation. If there's no obvious threat right now, then use 'put someone in a spot', 'announce future badness', 'tell them the consequences', and 'offer an opportunity' aggressively - those are great for setting up interesting things. So in your example, clearly 'a couple of high-powered people visit a bar' isn't going to start a fight directly, that wouldn't make sense, so hmm, my thought process might be: * put someone in a spot - this doesn't have to be a fight, so maybe some ganger recognises one of the PCs and yells out 'hey it's bob i heard you shot some guy', let's see how they react? maybe they want to buy you a drink? * announce future badness - i probably have some idea of the forces and threats in this town, i can have some dude come over and try and ingratiate themselves to you by telling you about some score, cool, do you trust them? * tell them the consequences - maybe there's clearly a fight brewing or some kind of big event upcoming that the room's buzzing over, do you want to get involved? you'll need to pick a side * offer an opportunity - hey some punk band wants you to be in their music video Basically all of these are completely plausible outcomes of the situation, but it's much harder to reason at the table in the situation -> outcome direction to get there.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:38
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Elfgames posted:why was an ultra badass wizard and the world's best sniper hitting up some podunk divebar? That's what they apparently do in Shadowrun. Hey, don't blame me if the setting doesn't make sense. Reene posted:I think hyphz is coming from the school of classic D&D DMing where the DM was expected to be actively, assholeishly antagonistic towards the players and it was expected they would use DM fiat to punish players for not playing in a way they felt was correct (which was, incidentally, one of the behaviors that pre-set adventuring modules was meant to curtail, because it set limits on the DM and players alike). Not so much that as "if the players do get their characters maimed in the heist, and they think the DM was being actively and assholishly antagonistic to them, how can they be proven wrong?" It just seems impossible. "We all died to that trap, there was no map, you just made the trap up, you knew we were weak in those skills, how can you possibly argue you weren't just deliberately screwing us?" Trusting the GM is one thing, but how does the GM ever challenge the players without breaking that trust in the actuality of the moment? Making a general rule like "I won't be unfair to your guys" sounds good until you get to the exact moment, but what's fair when the PCs open a door, the GM has to decide what's behind it right there, fully aware of their exact skill scores and HP totals at that moment? Covok posted:Soft moves and hard moves exist in every game. They are the backbone of GMing. They are two Core Concepts of game design put into words. They are introducing challenges for the players to solve and failure states that don't end the game so that there is risk. It isn't. In a classic dungeon crawl say, when the players run out of things to do, they can go kick down a door. Or not. It doesn't get forced onto them. If you're using a map, then the players know what's behind that door was always there. If their PCs are tired out and they kick down a door and meet a dragon that was always there, they know they screwed up. If the dragon was only spawned there by the GM, they know they've just been screwed or penalized. If the GM knows full well, as he/she will, that their HP totals are low and their anti-dragon spells are offline, then placing the dragon there "fairly" at the moment the door is kicked down is impossible. hyphz fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Jan 7, 2018 |
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Jan 7, 2018 23:42
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hyphz posted:
So, it doesn't resolve all of your concerns, but the above stuff suggests that you are thinking of a heist in a mansion as being something that involves room by room exploration. I don't think Blades intends a heist to involve room by room exploration. Indeed, the only PbtA game I am aware of that does expect that (Dungeon World) expressly tells you to draw maps. There's nothing stopping a GM from having a map in Blades of course, and it might even be helpful, but the game doesn't expect players to explore it all. My reading of Blades is that if you want to find where the treasure is located, you need to roll actions to fill the relevant clock. You roll survey, or study, or hunt, or attune, or whatever (maybe you do something that doesn't require a roll but still advances the clock). If you succeed you fill the clock and some complications might happen. If you fail, you will have to deal with a consequence (perhaps you ran into a trapped door?), and make no progress for now. When the consequence is dealt with, you can explore again. Once you've filled the exploration clock, you know where the treasure is, and how to get to it (you can just say that you go there when you need to). There are probably other obstacles. Breaking through a wall is probably a pointless action when exploring, because it won't fill a clock unless you have established that what is on the other side will help you find the location of the treasure. If you are still determined to break through the wall, you will probably roll wreck, and we see how you do. If you succeed with a complication, then maybe there is a guard in the next room. If you just succeed, I'll probably give you a description of a room that gets you no closer to finding the treasure. You might lose resources taking this action, but you chose to take an action that wouldn't advance exploration mechanically--it might, on the other hand, be a very sensible action if you have already established the treasure is behind the door. This doesn't address what constitutes a good level of challenge in Blades, and arguably the book could address that better. But, like all PbtA games, Blades in more interested in setting up fictionally appropriate situations, and finding out what happens, than it is about the level of challenge being satisfying. The PCs are responsible for deciding what jobs they want to take, and the tier system should tell them how much resistance they should expect (as should their information gathering). The game gives PCs broad ways to judge if a heist will be too easy or too hard.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:46
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hyphz posted:That's what they apparently do in Shadowrun. Hey, don't blame me if the setting doesn't make sense. no it really isn't. in Shadow Run the players are assumed to be "shadowrunners" who make shadow runs against megacorporate targets. do you often run a game with seemingly 0 idea of what you're playing?
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Jan 7, 2018 23:46
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hyphz posted:Not so much that as "if the players do get their characters maimed in the heist, and they think the DM was being actively and assholishly antagonistic to them, how can they be proven wrong?" you are absolutely describing a breakdown between the gm and the players. don't play with/be a lovely gm and understand that the game is there for every person to enjoy. blades has this to say about these concepts quote:Be a fan of the PCs. Present the world honestly—things really are stacked against them—but don’t make yourself the enemy of the PCs. They have enemies enough. Be interested in the characters and excited about their victories. and quote:Earn the trust of the group by being a supportive and fair advocate of the integrity of the fiction. It’s your job to portray a fictional world with integrity, not one that’s contrived and “set up” for particular outcomes. When you advocate for something, the players know that you do so on behalf of this integrity, not to get your way or to arrange situations to your liking.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:50
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Elfgames posted:no it really isn't. in Shadow Run the players are assumed to be "shadowrunners" who make shadow runs against megacorporate targets. do you often run a game with seemingly 0 idea of what you're playing? I was using a sample adventure which had that exact setup. Even if they're running against big corps they apparently get recruited in dive bars because that's a cyberpunk trope.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:50
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I'm really wondering what kinda weirdo players you play with, hyphz. Because what I'm getting from your posts is that your players make ultra-focused characters that then can't be challenged in their specialty, but then also don't want to be challenged outside of their comfort zones? And then get mad if any of their actions have consequences that weren't put in writing at the start of the game? And also want to have expendable resources... that they never expend because costs are bad always? 
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Jan 7, 2018 23:51
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hyphz posted:I was using a sample adventure which had that exact setup. Even if they're running against big corps they apparently get recruited in dive bars because that's a cyberpunk trope.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:53
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Serf posted:you are absolutely describing a breakdown between the gm and the players. don't play with/be a lovely gm and understand that the game is there for every person to enjoy. And that's hitting the nail on the head - I can't see how you can possibly do that unless it's decided in advance. If it's not in advance, then at the moment you make the fiction up, you just have too much information to not set up for a particular outcome. If the players are worn out and out of spells and you spawn a dragon, you know what the outcome's going to be, and you've effectively set up for it whether you like it or not. If you don't spawn the dragon, the players know they can walk around worn out and there will never be one. The Dimmer Sisters house is explicitly described in the printed fiction as one that nobody who has entered has ever left. Isn't maintaining the integrity of that statement exactly the same as setting up for a particular outcome?
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Jan 7, 2018 23:53
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hyphz posted:I mean, my nightmare scenario for this was in a Shadowrun game when a player made a character with some ridiculous level of shooting ability - the highest the system allows I think; another made a mage etc. Since it's city/sandbox based I was having to adlib and was trying to go with the 'what makes sense' process but it was falling apart on that. Mages are 1% of the population, would a dive bar really have one on security? If your players are being lovely and making he worlds greatest sniper and a mage, dont have them be in a bar, you loving juggernaut. Have them be in prison and then have them break out or something.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:54
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hyphz posted:And that's hitting the nail on the head - I can't see how you can possibly do that unless it's decided in advance. If it's not in advance, then at the moment you make the fiction up, you just have too much information to not set up for a particular outcome. If the players are worn out and out of spells and you spawn a dragon, you know what the outcome's going to be, and so like it or not you've set up for it. If you don't spawn the dragon, the players know they can walk around worn out and there will never be one. it literally says "don't be the enemy of the pcs". that is a nice way of saying "don't be a loving rear end in a top hat"
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Jan 7, 2018 23:55
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hyphz posted:The Dimmer Sisters house is explicitly described in the printed fiction as one that nobody who has entered has ever left. Isn't maintaining the integrity of that statement exactly the same as setting up for a particular outcome? Don't send a low tier, inexperienced crew to the Dimmer Sisters' house. If they decide to go there knowing that no one returns they should expect things to be rough. It isn't unfair to put difficult challenges in a place they have been told will almost certainly kill them.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:56
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hyphz posted:It isn't. In a classic dungeon crawl say, when the players run out of things to do, they can go kick down a door. Or not. It doesn't get forced onto them. If you're using a map, then the players know what's behind that door was always there. If their PCs are tired out and they kick down a door and meet a dragon that was always there, they know they screwed up. If the dragon was only spawned there by the GM, they know they've just been screwed or penalized. If the GM knows full well, as he/she will, that their HP totals are low and their anti-dragon spells are offline, then placing the dragon there "fairly" at the moment the door is kicked down is impossible. Hey you can totally do this in a classic dungeon crawl by just being lovely at planning out your dungeon. All of these things are just sightly different approaches to thinking about and doing the same things every GM does. The key point of breakdown is being uncommunicative asses instead of adults trying to have a mutual good time.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:57
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Playing a PBTA game isn't like playing Nethack or something where the point is to skillfully apply resources and abilities to avoid total failure. D&D can be, and its ambiguity in this respect often works to its detriment because different writers, players, and GMs often approach it as one or the other and get caught on the contradictions. Even a total (narrative) failure of a heist in something like Blades in the Dark is not a negative in the way your character dying in Nethack is. Rather than ending the game you'd probably do something like have the characters all go to jail and then plan their escape, or switch over to their bumbling henchmen as they try to break them out for a session or two, or have them miraculously saved by a mysterious benefactor who they now owe big-time, or whatever. This is slightly obscured by the fact that Blades, like many PBTA games, still uses expendable resources and features occasional decisions that at least look like they have a correct/skillful and incorrect/failure answer, but these are not indicative of the actual structure of the game and are more just a way of manipulating the players psychologically (so that they have a good time telling a collaborative story.) I generally don't find this very interesting, because I don't think "collaborative" is often a good thing for storytelling and I really really like skillful challenges. I would much rather have an RPG that bounds itself in such a way that the GM can play antagonistically and the game will still work, and in fact even requires it (at least within certain silos, i.e. you're a neutral arbiter out of combat but in combat you're doing your best to win with the XP budget the game provides for you). But ultimately, anything PBTA is probably not that game.
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Jan 7, 2018 23:58
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hyphz posted:It isn't. In a classic dungeon crawl say, when the players run out of things to do, they can go kick down a door. Or not. It doesn't get forced onto them. If you're using a map, then the players know what's behind that door was always there. If their PCs are tired out and they kick down a door and meet a dragon that was always there, they know they screwed up. If the dragon was only spawned there by the GM, they know they've just been screwed or penalized. If the GM knows full well, as he/she will, that their HP totals are low and their anti-dragon spells are offline, then placing the dragon there "fairly" at the moment the door is kicked down is impossible. 1) I once ran a 13th Age game using a map where I use house rules to come up with weather the next room would be an encounter or a skill challenge of some sort and then made up depending on the result. No tables, just went " oh, it's a skill thing. How about the floor gives out and that they have to run away" or something. The game went great. We had a map, but it was just there for fluff. The players never noticed. For the record, the house rule came from the Tower of the ogre Magi Adventure. Not that we use at Adventure. Just that rule. The actual Adventure centered on trying to recover the dwarf king's old crown. It ended with them stopping an ancient demon from coming back and destroying the world by treating it with an ancient ritual that they had found in a random scroll. I made all that up as I went along. The players never noticed and they loved the game. 2) the map doesn't exist. The dungeon doesn't exist. There is nothing behind the door except what you imagined. There was nothing behind the door until you invented it. Therefore, it was made up on the spot. It just was made up on the spot a little while before. And there is no difference between those two situations. The players will never know the difference unless you tell them. They will enjoy the game just as much. This is the core basis of being a GM and running a game. You are the computer that adjuncts the rules and creates the world and response the players, like a computer in a video game. It doesn't matter if you did it 3 months before or right in that moment. If you're good at what you do, they'll never notice. And even if they do, as long as they had fun, they won't care.
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Jan 8, 2018 00:02
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hyphz posted:And that's hitting the nail on the head - I can't see how you can possibly do that unless it's decided in advance. If it's not in advance, then at the moment you make the fiction up, you just have too much information to not set up for a particular outcome. If the players are worn out and out of spells and you spawn a dragon, you know what the outcome's going to be, and you've effectively set up for it whether you like it or not. If you don't spawn the dragon, the players know they can walk around worn out and there will never be one. But if you're playing D&D or similar game and your players walk through four rooms, use up all their spells in those rooms, then open the last room and there's a dragon in it, that's fine because the dragon was already there. Do I have that right?
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Jan 8, 2018 00:03
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hyphz posted:then at the moment you make the fiction up, you just have too much information to not set up for a particular outcome. If the players are worn out and out of spells and you spawn a dragon, you know what the outcome's going to be This is just wrong though in AW. You have principles to follow which include detailed stuff about being fans of the PCs, so 'you open the door and are killed by a dragon' is not a legitimate hard move. Neither is there being a dragon there if it doesn't plausibly follow from the fiction. Thirdly, 'there is a dragon behind the door' isn't a fixed outcome unless your PCs are mindless combat automatons that have no engagement options except auto-attack. It might be a bad choice in Pathfinder because the dragon's minimum breath damage is more than your HP and it gets +26 to initiative, but there's a reason *world games don't have pathfinder-style combat systems.
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Jan 8, 2018 00:05
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Serf posted:it literally says "don't be the enemy of the pcs". that is a nice way of saying "don't be a loving rear end in a top hat" It's a polite fiction (heh) that allows you to shift responsibility for the consequences of character actions away from the GM. He's saying that without this psychological barrier/misdirection/whatever between the GM's actions and player's misfortunes the players will be mad at the GM for making a dragon eat the dwarf rather than at the dragon for eating the dwarf or at themselves for making the dwarf look so delicious. It's the same reason why people get so hung up on rules for monster creation. If the GM "follows the rules" in making a monster and the monster kills you, it's the monster that killed you. If the GM "just makes up some bullshit" and it kills you, that's the GM making up some bullshit to kill you. Even if the result is exactly the same monster.
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Jan 8, 2018 00:16
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Splicer posted:So if you're playing a *world or similar game and your players walk through four rooms, use up all their spells in those rooms, then open the last room and there's a dragon in it, that's a dick move because there's no way they can survive that. It doesn't matter what system you're playing. If you have a map in advance that says there's a dragon in that room, the players use their spells up in the first four rooms and then open the last room and see the dragon, that's fine because you are maintaining the integrity of the map. If you don't have such a map and the players use their spells up in the first four rooms and then open the last room and see a dragon that you've just spontaneously decided was there, then whether you like it or not you've just set up for that outcome because you know too well what is going to happen. If you don't have such a map and you want to avoid setting up for outcomes then the players will know that anything they meet when they kick down a door will be something they have a chance against, no matter what bad a state they're in, because you can't set up an outcome. quote:Don't send a low tier, inexperienced crew to the Dimmer Sisters' house. If they decide to go there knowing that no one returns they should expect things to be rough. It isn't unfair to put difficult challenges in a place they have been told will almost certainly kill them. Cool, now write to the author and ask why he sent them to the house in the example of play and had them safely escape after a few rolls. quote:It's a polite fiction (heh) that allows you to shift responsibility for the consequences of character actions away from the GM. He's saying that without this psychological barrier/misdirection/whatever between the GM's actions and player's misfortunes the players will be mad at the GM for making a dragon eat the dwarf rather than at the dragon for eating the dwarf or at themselves for making the dwarf look so delicious. Nail on the head. Well, with one exception: it's in the GM's head. It's not "the GM making up some bullshit to kill you", it's "me making up some bullshit to kill the PCs", again even if it's exactly the same monster. hyphz fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Jan 8, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 00:19
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Splicer posted:I think his argument is that if you've already put the dragon there, the PCs will be careful because they might run into a dragon, and if they're not careful they'll feel like it's their own fault. If you haven't already put the dragon there, choosing to put the dragon there makes you an rear end in a top hat, but not putting the dragon there means there's no reason for the PCs to be careful. this is the part that gets me. the principles of the game indicate that you should have things follow from the fiction. if the players aren't being careful with their heist (still assuming blades here) then that will invite consequences that are fictionally appropriate. this is even codified in the action roll. not being careful could get you into a desperate position, which, on a 1-5, could bring about a serious complication. this is where a dragon (or more than likely a cadre of guards) would be appropriate. and like all complications, they can be resisted. e: there is also no rule saying you can't have a map with all the various threats set up beforehand. you can totally do that, but the game also allows you to improv an entire heist. the players aren't required to plan anything and neither is the gm
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Jan 8, 2018 00:22
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