Is this "Fair" - Part III

[mcrow]

One more thing: you cannot convince me that an undetectable extreme-save DC insta-kill trap is an example of good design. You can't convince me that springing an ambush by hill giants on a 1st level group is good design. You can't convince me that a map saying "great treasure" that leads the a group to a TPK that they could not have predicted coming is good design. These are all examples of really sloppy DMing. Any fool can kill off PCs. The challenge comes in putting together an adventure that requires them to use every skill, every spell, all their brainpower, and a lot of luck to come out alive, but which guarantees success if all these elements are in play.

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I agree, if there is no way the players could know they are in over their heads(even though they did research), or a way for them to escape then it is unfair and I would not want to play in such a game.

 

[drothgery]

What i find interesting is that all 2this is fair" questions always end with the players dead. Would also be fair, good and fun to have your 15th level characters through the Sunless Citadel, or The burning plague, to put a couple examples, and spend there a couple hours slaughtering kobolds?

And the answer is of course not. I mean, it's all well and good to have the occasional high-level encounter with a horde of mooks (if only to demonstrate why hordes of mooks can't touch a typical party of high-level adventurers in D&D unless they're Tucker's Kobolds or something similar) or other low-level challenge just to let the PCs see how cool they are, but an adventure where the fighter destroys any attacker in one attack, the rogue can take 1 to find any traps, the wizard's first-level spells are decimating (and rarely saved against), and the cleric destroys all undead she encounters even with a roll of 1 on a turn check and snake eyes on the damage dice isn't much more fun than the instakill dungeon/encounter.

It's a little more fun, in that your characters survived, so the DM can correct the mistake without rebooting the game, but not much.

 

[Jarrod]

"Fair or not fair" is completely and utterly the wrong question.

The real question is, "good for the overall enjoyment of the game or bad for the overall enjoyment of the game". I think that in most cases this is bad for the enjoyment of the game.

Amen.

Fairness involves two parties playing by a set of rules, where the point is for one of the parties to win. The rules give you a system to keep the two parties equal, so that the winner can feel good about it.

The point of my D&D campaign is not GM vs. players. It's for the players to have fun, and, by extension, for me to have fun.


Back to the original scenario. If your players enjoy that sort of thing, then by all means put the map in. I would see it and start investigating before I got anywhere near the map itself. Even getting the local priest to cast an Augury can help a lot.

My group is different. They're my friends, casual gamers, and they definitely do not think about the game that way. They're getting together for an evening of fun, and I can't get them to use divinations to save their lives. So yeah, they'd figure the map is the next adventure hook and run off after it - and get pretty angry when they get smushed.

Know your players, and do what is fun for your group.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I think what I am becoming to realize after reading a bunch of these threads is that there are many people that do not believe that there should be challenges in the gaming world that are not level appropriate..

There should be, and if the party is about to go off to run into them, the GM should talk to them out of character and say "If you do this you will be killed, do you want to have your characters go somewhere else". Death is not fun; especially death that you have no chance against. Have them around, just make danged sure the players (not the characters) know what is level approriate and what isn't; so they can enjoy thier gaming.

I see the GM as a facilitator for insteresting action scenes and stories for my character. For the DM to set up a sitatuion where the character, due to ignorance, gets killed - well that doesn't facillitate anything. Yes, I detest the adversarial approach.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

My group is different. They're my friends, casual gamers, and they definitely do not think about the game that way. They're getting together for an evening of fun, and I can't get them to use divinations to save their lives. So yeah, they'd figure the map is the next adventure hook and run off after it - and get pretty angry when they get smushed.

Know your players, and do what is fun for your group.

Yeah. What he said.

 

[Corvidae]

I just want to point out that killing off the party is not bad in itself.

One of my first tries at DMing, I seriously warned my players outside of the game that they needed to watch themselves, that they needed to be careful because there would be things that could kill them, and I had no problem with killing them.

Now here is how it went, one of the players got beaten to within an inch of his life because the rest of the party ran. So this player ran after trying to hold off a mob on his own. He loses the mob in the woods, and I am ready to move on. At this point the player jumps out of the woods and flips off two of the mob who were just ready to give up looking for him. THey yelled for help and he wound up dead.

I see nothing unfair about that, the player knew something about the game, knew that I would kill his character, had an out, had the ability to get information, and simply by his own stupidity died.

Now there is a difference, it seems that your party did not think that you would lead them into a dungeon that was higher than their level. Also comes the fact that they could not find out anything, from your own admission, the dungeon is in the middle of nowhere, and nothing they could reasonably do would help them out.

And they went for it, and died. No escaping, no warning, no nothing.

It seems that this would not be fun for anyone, no gamer, old or new likes rerolling characters because they were misled.

Just my two cents

Congrats, you the DM, ruler of the world, controller of everything killed the PC's in one of the most anticlimatic ways possible

John

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think what I am becoming to realize after reading a bunch of these threads is that there are many people that do not believe that there should be challenges in the gaming world that are not level appropriate.

In my campaign world there are things that low level PC's hear about that would be instant death if they followed up on them, IMHO there will be times that a PC will not have the appropriate skill levels to investigate something, or open a lock, or find a trap, ...etc.

I don't think that's an accurate view at all of those who think this is unfair (after your revisions, which, I gotta say, pretty much invalidates the poll).

The same is true in my game -- the PC's will hear about things that they cannot handle and will encounter things that they cannot defeat.

The clear difference is that when they encounter something they cannot defeat, they will KNOW they cannot defeat it. I won't just have it kill them because it can, I will have it there to emphasize the fact that it CAN kill them.

Gathering Information is something that anyone with an average Charisma can get a 20 on. Given the level of success that a result of 20+ indicates, they should be able to find out enough information to persuade them to stay away, unless the DM is deliberately making it hard for them to find out that information, and thus it becomes a game of trying to outsmart the DM rather than being a heroic character in a fantasy world.

 

[Someone]

I voted "other". I don´t know if it´s fair or unfair, but sure it´s bad DMing. The map serves no other purpose but to kill the PCs; it doesn´t advance the history, provide any clue, or do anything remotely constructive except to inflate the DM´s ego for beings able to kills a bunch of 1st level characters.

Or, perhaps, sew the seeds of later adventures...?

Do you think that dropping plot hooks about high-level adventures should wait for the pcs to be high-level? Because, especially when you get to epic levels, you almost have to have dropped clues many games ago to lay the groundwork for the challenges the pcs will be facing. Unless you want the diablo-style, "everything is automatically a challenge for you at your level wherever you go and whatever you do" type of game- fine for some folks, but my group likes things a little different.

I guess it's all about play style, eh?

It´s funny that you mention this, because I actually used the map thing in a campaing I DMed. The party found references of alost dwarven city that could be full of mithral items. They spent a lot of time looking for clues, which lead to many adventures. They arrived to the city a bit early than I thought, since they cleverly used divination and teleport spells to avoid a dangerous trek through the mountains -and I didn´t change the enemie´s statistics-One of the encounters in the city involved four of five iron golems (against a party of 8-9th level, I think), an encounter that couldn´t be bypassed, since they had to perform a ritual just in themiddle of the room where the golems were.

What I did not was to give them the city´s location at 1st level and laugh as they headed towards it, thinking on how stupid my players are.

 

[Sanackranib]

hell yes! if the party knows great wealth is behind door #1 and doesnt prepair for what ever might be there then they are 2 stupid to be adventurers and are better off out of the gene pool.

 

[Sanackranib]

In light of your new facts, it's highly unfair. If the DM knows that the PCs will be unable to research the thing and STILL goads them into going there, knowing that it'll kill them, then congratulations, he's just become a RBDM and I'd probably walk away from his table.

Now if they had the opportunity to find out that it was the "Temple of Horrendous Doom" but chose to ignore it and rush there to claim the "phat lewtz" then it's fair, if a bit underhanded.

Regards,
Wayne

its not up to the DM to spoon feed the players. there were many instances in games where I have been (as both a player and a DM) where the players got ahold of some juicy bit of info and either didn't investigate it and rushed headlong into certin death or blew thier rolls
DEATH HAPPENS! hopefully you learn from it and don't repeat the same mistake. as a player AND as a DM.