LEB Discussion Thread '10

Pfft... I invented the internet, AND won it. Also D&D. Also, some other stuff.


ps. This was funnier when I wasn't the fourth person replying.

Naw, like any joke, it gets better the more times you tell it

CaBaNa said:

The concept that any one condition is better every time is misguiding. The logic used to say one is better than another, discounts a number of factors, and is fallacious.

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Nobody said that one condition is better every time. Everything is situation dependent, but there are general rules of thumb when it comes to the effectiveness of different conditions. I'm pretty sure that Stunned trumps Slowed 99+% of the time.

CaBaNa said:

What I will say is this, if Mythra has more fun leading with Color Spray, that is what Mythra should do. If the other members allow that to affect their fun, they aren't likely playing the game for fun, but to "win".

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What's wrong with playing the game to win? You make it sound like that's a bad thing.

I admit that one of several reasons that I am playing the game is to win. That's fun for me. I want the PCs to win every single encounter (or minimally, to survive to fight another day) and I also enjoy it a lot when their success is efficient without wasting a lot of resources.

If someone has fun and does a heavily subpar tactic and it leads to one PC forcing the group to hole up for the night because that PC is out of healing surges when everyone else is chomping at the bit to continue on, or if the subpar tactic leads to a TPK, I don't think that it's unreasonable for the other players to consider their "fun" disrupted.

The concept that one person's fun should always be allowed to override everyone else's fun, no matter how much it distracts from the experience of the game, isn't always valid. For example, the disruptive PC that goes out of his way to cause trouble both in the party and with non-hostile NPCs; or the PC that says bizarre things, just in order to be bizarre; or the PC that heads to the next room in the middle of a fight in order to check it out and ends up bringing more monsters back to the main fight (which happened to a group I was in a few weeks back); is not necessarily as much fun for the other players as he is for his own player.

Too true on the disruptive player part. One guy in my old real life group (he was a rogue and tricked out slight of hand) would just wander through town, "Ok, I pick his pocket, ok I pick her pocket" and 99% of the time he would succeed... that was not fun for the rest of us.

Comrades Succor...

Dododod (Palindrome), Tonk, Hacker Brass, all characters played by Kenhood that did exactly the things you quote as not being fun. All quoted regularly in the Peanut Gallery for being fun.

The other PC's that traveled with him had fun, and in their own way, stood out as well. The people playing those PC's enjoyed the antics, and rolled with the punches DM's threw their way for the trouble. DM's got to stretch their creative abilities and take adventures in directions that were surprising and unique.

Even bringing more monsters back to the main fight is fun, in a challenging way. Playing different roles is fun, even if those roles are "disruptive". If someone is being truly disruptive, DM's and Judges are able to step in. Playing differing roles, and being less than tactical is fun. The chance of a TPK brings tension to the story.

In short, conflict makes a story interesting and enjoyable. If everything was static and predictable, people would lose interest and become bored.

If someone is making everyone have a bad time, that is different than making less than perfect tactical choices.

Edit: r1, that rogue should have gotten a cursed ring for his troubles. Can't be removed, and applies an awful negative to picking pockets.

Second Edit: Situational appropriateness, that seems to be the main theme. What's right for one group may not be right for another. What's right for one PC may not be right for another.

Don't worry, he got his. Stockades for getting caught, lost a goodly amount of gold as a fine to go free.

Foreword: This is entirely opinion, like most statements on the internet. Please take it as such.

KarinsDad said:

What's wrong with playing the game to win? You make it sound like that's a bad thing.

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It is. At least from my perspective. Winning D&D is a terrible goal because it's unachievable. D&D isn’t a game in most senses. It’s playing pretend with a few more rules attached. When I was a young lad, if I’d been trying to “win” at pretend I’d have found myself soon without playmates.

The end goal of D&D isn’t to get to level 30 and beat Orcus. It’s to sit around RPing with your friends. The point is not the destination, but the journey. I can’t imagine the reaction of one of the players at my table if I told them their choice in power was poor because “X other power” does .75 more average damage.

I think I missed out on the foundation of this mindset by skipping 3.x. I’m very happy I did.

Again, YMMV, and apparently does.

I’m pretty much in the same boat as Twils. RPG’s aren’t about winning, and it isn’t a “PvP deathmatch” between the DM and PC’s. It’s about getting together with a bunch of friends, BSin and having a good time.

Some people enjoy building solid characters, great! Some people enjoy building flavorful and fluffy characters, great! It’s been my experience that gaming groups gravitate to a similar mindset or break up. You have 4 people who want to have immersive gameplay where everything is IC and the play is serious, and one guy who is just there to goof off and be nutty, either the one guy will become more serious, the group will get more nutty, or the lone guy will stop showing up. Personally, I have left groups that are too serious. I play for fun and frivolity. I view the rules more like guidelines, and in games I DM, frequently toss them aside in favor of something that would make a cool story. Rules wise, the fighter probably cant pick up and toss the Halfling rogue one handed in the “fastball special” move, but I’ll let them cuz it’s a fun move and the players want to do it.

No one really remembers the time things went smoothly. You generally don’t hear about the time that the group took down 2 ogres in 3 rounds and only had to spend a single surge. You DO hear about the time Glassjaw the mage went toe to toe with a Giant for 3 rounds while the party managed to push a boulder off a high ledge to crush the giant’s skull, or when Kneecapper the rogue seduced the queen, stole her jewels, and the party barely managed to scamper out of town before they were all beheaded.

As Twils said, YMMV, but as long as everyone at the table is having fun, I count it as a “win”, regardless of deaths, rules, or strategy.

Mezegis said:

It’s been my experience that gaming groups gravitate to a similar mindset or break up.

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This conversation has meandered more than a small river, but I just wanted to say this is my experience as well.

twilsemail said:

It is. At least from my perspective. Winning D&D is a terrible goal because it's unachievable.

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It's not a terrible goal. Even the hardcore fluff roleplayers want to win encounters.

twilsemail said:

The end goal of D&D isn’t to get to level 30 and beat Orcus. It’s to sit around RPing with your friends. The point is not the destination, but the journey.

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Ah, you are misunderstanding me. My goal is to win encounters, not to win the game.

The encounters are a major part of the journey. They are the main measurable challenge. They can be overcome, or not.

The non-encounter RPing portion (and quite frankly, the RPing during encounters is typically not of the same caliber as RPing outside of encounters with the exception of RP skill challenges, probably because some people are focusing on the encounter) is also a major part of the game.

But, I don't just play the game for the RPing part. That's part of the fun, but it is not the only part of the fun (like some serious RPers insist).

Mezegis said:

No one really remembers the time things went smoothly. You generally don’t hear about the time that the group took down 2 ogres in 3 rounds and only had to spend a single surge.

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Not always. My home group still talks about the time that they went in, ignored every foe but the BBEG Lich, and killed the Lich in the first two rounds. They were super efficient with tactics and power choices (and lucky dice rolls). In this case, that's what allowed the encounter to be memorable.

It depends on how well the DM presents the encounter. Any encounter can be boring. It's the DM's jobs to try to make every encounter memorable in some way.

There are a ton of encounters where a single trap or environmental hazard or NPC non-combatant can make or break how memorable an encounter is.

How efficient the group is typically doesn't decide whether encounters are memorable or not, but like other encounter elements, it can (and it can lead to more encounters per day which can result in other memorable encounters occurring, like being low on resources, but still kicking butt).

The aspect that makes an encounter memorable (as per your crushing the Giant's head with a boulder example) is that element of that encounter that was unique or different than most other encounters. That could be a lucky streak of 4 20s on the dice rolls. Anything that makes the encounter stick out in the players minds can make it memorable.

And usually, it's important that the PCs actually survive. I've found that my players can remember some of the encounters of their old dead PCs, but tend to soon forget much about them once they are gone. If it is an ongoing PC though, they remember the smallest details about them two years later due to the continuity. In my home game, we started at level 1 and are at level 19 and the PCs that have died (or were lost other ways like the player left town) are mostly forgotten, but the PCs that have been around the longest are the ones that the players remember stories of the best.

So yes, winning encounters is often critically important for story continuity. And if someone's goal is to just breeze through multiple PCs in order to try his hand at playing many different PC flavors or mechanics (I had one player who did this 4 times in 16 levels), that's fine for him. But if he causes a party TPK in the process, that interfers with the story continuity. It interfers with the journey that twilsemail was referencing.

An abrupt end to the journey is usually not as memorable or as fun as some people would lead others to believe. It can be a lot of fun, but usually it's anticlimatic.