"Run away! Run away!" ... what if they don't?

5ekyu · Jun 26, 2018

Les Moore said:
No, I'm not saying it's the "average" player "in my games", OTOH, I find it odd you haven't experienced it at least once. Nobody ever got
greedy, or impatient, on a crawl? To borrow a term from a mighty, logical one, "fascinating"...

So when you referenced the average player and that long list of things they do when they should be assessing situation, checking with other pcs and hauling ass - if not referring to your games - you were referting to the average players in other people's games?

But, for mine... Lets see... When they see an adversary and should be assessing, gut checking, coordinating with team...

Figuring xp from it - no. While i cannot recall it ever, we have not used xp for leveling in decades.

Figuring out specific or even general spends from its loot... Uhh... No... First its relatively rare for most of its loot to be visible. Second, even if it is they are usually more involved and focused on what its doing.i get a lot of questions right off the bat about circumstances, terrain, obvious dangers, entrances/exits and all that, not loot. When appropriate i throw in such descriptions either as key info or hust temptations.

Maybe someone has done this sub rosa with me not noticing it but even if that were true, they would not be the average player i have encountered.

But, if its not the average player at my table or yours... where was it that you have seen it enough to make you decide it is the average players?

Lanefan · Jun 26, 2018

Harzel said:
Well, I suppose, if you really think your character is naive and uneducated. Personally, I find most "flawed" characters to be implausible and just a self-indulgence on the part of the player. The buffers and concessions that a DM has to use to keep such characters alive are annoyingly immersion-breaking.

That's on the DM. Instead, she should let the dice fall where they may and if the flawed character (or any character, for all that) gets killed off, so be it.

But if the flawed character beats the odds and actually goes on to a good or even great career - that's the stuff legends are made of!

Lanefan

5ekyu · Jun 26, 2018

Paul Farquhar said:
You have it backwards. A lot of the enjoyment of the game comes from a sense of peril. If the players become aware that the DM will not, under any circumstances, allow their character to die, all sense of peril is lost, an the fun greatly diminished. You can't feel heroic if you are aware there is no chance of failure.

And if a character is going to die, it is best they die at low level, before the player becomes too attached to them.

That is true if and only if the only loss or failure condition is death, if the only thing of value to lose is the character life and nothing else matters.

I myself prefer games with more than that.

Lanefan · Jun 26, 2018

Harzel said:
When I restarted DMing a couple of years ago, the idea of players referencing the Monster Manual gave me conniptions. But in the intervening time, I've decided that the players' decisions are a lot more interesting if they are informed, and that is head and shoulders more important than mystery. The Monster Manual is, IMO, an acceptable proxy for the lore that PCs would know. It's definitely not ideal that is comprehensive, and it's kind of lazy on my part, but I still think it's better than leaving players with a dearth of information.

After the first time they've met a particular monster (other than the most common of pests e.g. orcs, koblds, goblins, etc. that they'd likely know all about) then maybe - with a lot of persuasion, much of it involving beer - I could get behind this.

Before or during that first encounter, though? Not a chance.

5ekyu · Jun 26, 2018

KenNYC said:
Playing badly to me is just playing badly. I was DMing a year or so back and this friend of a friend decided he was going to play a nutsy, kooky monk who went around making Three Stooges noises and acting all wacky. He thought it was funny and he was "role playing". I had to eventually introduce the 12 lvl Ranger to introduce the adventure, and he decided that role playing meant urinating on the Ranger's foot and setting the forest on fire. All while making the Three Stooges sound. So, is that role playing or just a guy saying "no" and trying to ruin the night? I decided against the Ranger killing his character as to not ruin anyone's time at the table.

People seem to justify anything as "roleplaying" when it really isn't: it is just a player being a chaos agent. Someone earlier said DM's shouldn't tell players how to play. I didn't, I just chose never to play with that person again.

Reading from context that the behavior was inappropriate for the game, why did the Gm approve the character with traits establishing that would be "what he does" or "how he acts"?

If its not something presented as a part of the character ahead of time **and** is disruptive, its someone being a jerk.

But you seem to be conflating being a bad player (disruptive) into the discussion about a character in play making bad choices.

There is a huge difference between telling the GM in background and skills that your character say has little knowledge abd overland savvy and them making sub-optimal choices in woodland situations even if your last character died in the woods and someone being a jerk without forewarning, right?

5ekyu · Jun 26, 2018

Harzel said:
Perhaps not intended, but that seems rather condescending. Your version of roleplaying is not the only one that is valid. In particular, there is (literally) a world of knowledge that PCs have that the players do not. It is quite possible to envision most improvements in player skill as improved understanding of how the PCs' world works - things that virtually every PC would know.* Certainly that's not the only way to look at it, but IMO it is a reasonable one.

It's fine to play low level characters as naive greenhorns, but I think it is also fine to assume that most really stupid or foolish characters would be washed out of the adventuring life very early (probably prior to level 1) via death, dismemberment, or just a recognition that they were just not cut out for that demanding a way of life. It is possible to reasonably reflect a low mental stat, or incorporate other interesting flaws or foibles without having the character behave in ways that frequently threaten their and/or the party's survival.

As noted, no 'mind meld' is needed to explain the player having learned things that every PC would already know.

* So, although it would be rude, inane, and pointless to mention say this in any actual situation, in the context of this theoretical discussion, one could even posit that it is playing a PC as more than usually ignorant of common (fictional world) knowledge that is poor roleplaying.

Re this bit...
"It is quite possible to envision most improvements in player skill as improved understanding of how the PCs' world works - things that virtually every PC would know.*"

So did the first character thst died come in established as "knows less than virtually every other oc would" and that failure was "in character roleplaying"? If so then the point about it being educational is illogical cuz you already knew it and *chose* to not use that knowledge.

Or if not, if that first pc did "know" but the player didnt, was there a pretty low dc check to do a "wait, your character would know not to..." Before the choice was turned into deadly result? If not, how was it decided that character did not know?

You **can** construct a scenario where one character's death should lead to someone else knowing better, but for it to make sense within the game world it needs a lot more setup than just "the player learned".

As for my way being the only way hogwash... The statemeny you quoted from,me talked about the illogic of ASSUMING the next character would know better and i was not claiming it was impossible they would know better.

So, meh.

Imaculata · Jun 26, 2018

Lanefan said:
No, it's exactly telling players how - and what - to play.

The first and fourth clauses above almost mandate characters to be non-chaotic and non-evil;

Non-evil, but anything else goes. I just don't want violent psychopath characters that derail the entire game.

Lanefan said:
the third clause implies they're expected to be lawful

Absolutely not. They are allowed to break the law.

Lanefan said:
And the third clause also directly tells them how to play - they have to work together, no independence, no rash actions.

Absolutely not, but they are expected to work as a team. This doesn't mean that they can't pursue their own goals, or split the party. But it's not every man for himself either.

And I should repeat that I'm not telling them how to play the game, but I'm asking them to make characters that fit this mode of play before we start playing.

Paul Farquhar · Jun 26, 2018

The big problem that I am seeing here is with DMs who see themselves as storytellers, and the players as puppets who should act out the story the DM has pre-ordained.

Harzel · Jun 26, 2018

Lanefan said:
I always thought level 1 was supposed to be the start of the adventuring life. Anything prior to that was merely parade-ground training of some sort.

That's perfectly reasonable, but not the only way to conceive of it.

Low intellgence, yes. Low wisdom, not so much.

Low wisdom need not manifest as generically reckless behavior. In fact, it is probably more interesting if it is somewhat situational, or otherwise nuanced.

This is about to get into an argument that's raged through here several times before, regarding player knowledge vs. character knowledge.

I'm familiar with that argument, but my point is not that all player knowledge is automatically fair play to be transferred to the character. Rather, in brief, I think people often lowball character knowledge, particularly in assuming that the knowledge of an inexperienced player is a good approximation of the knowledge of a low level character. (Not that people put it that way, but it is implicit in what they say, or at least it seems so to me.)

The simplest answer, if it's something a PC might have heard about during training or whenever but might also never have heard of, is a d20 die roll. The higher (in 3-4-5e) or lower (in 0-1-2e) you roll, the more your PC happens to know about the topic at hand.

Sure, and there's a lot of specific knowledge that I would handle this way. However, for a lot of generic knowledge, I think auto-success is well justified since that "or whenever" that you skipped over lightly probably includes at least an order of magnitude more (fictional) time that will ever be covered by game play.

This is completely disconnected from anything the player might know; on a good roll you can then bend that player knowledge to the task, but on a bad roll you have to grit your real-life teeth and play it as if it's all new to you - which, to the PC, it clearly is.

Lanefan

Yeah, and that's an example of that assumption creeping in - that what a player knows likely exceeds what a character would know, whereas I would tend to assume that just the opposite is true, at least in the realm of generic knowledge (a term I admittedly have not defined, but the approximate intent of which is, I hope, reasonably clear).

5ekyu · Jun 26, 2018

Imaculata said:
Non-evil, but anything else goes. I just don't want violent psychopath characters that derail the entire game.

Absolutely not. They are allowed to break the law.

Absolutely not, but they are expected to work as a team. This doesn't mean that they can't pursue their own goals, or split the party. But it's not every man for himself either.

And I should repeat that I'm not telling them how to play the game, but I'm asking them to make characters that fit this mode of play before we start playing.

This is really not anything different than many GMs do, with varying degrees of this being a GM solo choice or a group decision.

I see this not as telling them what to play as explaining the menu.

I am not telling you to eat mexican food if i invite you over to taco Tuesday. I am giving you the choice.

"Run away! Run away!" ... what if they don't?

5ekyu

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Lanefan

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Lanefan

Victoria Rules

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Paul Farquhar

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Adventurer

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