Looting Bodies

[stegma]

In my experience, ret-conning hurts the game setting's plausability and hurts honest players who are willing to accept thier mistakes and the concequences there of. Usually nothing stops a character from trying to correct the mistake in game. There are many divintation and transportation spells that make correcting the problem easier. This is specificly why I felt it was a mistake for the OP-DM to give a GP amount to the players.

**** Exactly - everytime someone sais oh.. im sure we would have done ______ ... it realy just kills it for me. Ive only played 1 year and yeah I make mistakes but I know moraly this doesnt happen. YOu walk out the door without bringing an umbrela and forgot your keys, well.. you get wet. - next time you wont forget.

 

[Felon]

There are a great many things that occur in an RPG that can be considered to go without saying. Did the characters have ample time and opportunity to loot the bodies? If so, then a DM might as well give them the benefit of the doubt. Many folks here seem to default to a punitive decision when all other things are equal, putting verisimilitude before satisfaction. Odd.

 

[Ranger REG]

There are a great many things that occur in an RPG that can be considered to go without saying. Did the characters have ample time and opportunity to loot the bodies? If so, then a DM might as well give them the benefit of the doubt. Many folks here seem to default to a punitive decision when all other things are equal, putting verisimilitude before satisfaction. Odd.

Ahem, cruel and sadistic here. *points to myself*

 

[frankthedm]

Many folks here seem to default to a punitive decision when all other things are equal, putting verisimilitude before satisfaction. Odd.

verisimilitude = satisfaction

 

[FireLance]

Let me start off with a quote from another thread:

Over at shootingdice.blogspot.com, Malcolm sez:

"After D&D last night I found myself able to articulate something that kind of sucks about the rules. D&D is designed to strictly assign responsibilities and outcomes for dungeon crawling. This breaks down into a number of standard tasks that players constantly undertake. D&D mandates rolls in short intervals in tasks like Search. D&D also assumes that players declare the task each time.

The unspoken balancing mechanism here is that as players have to declare that they're doing exactly the same thing over and over again, somebody will slip up and miss the trap/monster/door. Basically, D&D relies on player boredom to create tension and conflict."

I simultaneously agree and disagree with this statement.

For n00bs, rolling things like Search is fun. The players have little experience with the rules. They aren't familiar with how the game works, how play is supposed to proceed, and how the cliches roll along. Novelty alone makes it really fun to worry about what's behind that door, or what you need to do to properly check an area over for hidden stuff.

After a while, the novelty wears off and that stuff becomes boring. You've opened the door with the trap a dozen times. It's old hat. Rules that were once fun and exciting are now boring.

The problem is that the rules fail to evolve in response to your group. It'd be a mistake to tell people to just cut past all that stuff, since there is a segment of gamers who enjoy it. But the people who don't enjoy it should have some simple tools for getting around it.

The key is striking the balance. You want the DM of the vets to see that it's a good thing to avoid boring roles. You want the DM of the newbies to see that, for many beginners, the sense of novelty injects interest and tension into everything.

Past a certain level, I think it would be quite lame for a DM to rule that the characters did not search the bodies of their foes simply because the players forgot to say that they did it. It would be fine for a group of inexperienced players or inexperienced characters, and it would be a good lesson for them.

For more experienced players and characters, I don't want to play "Did you remember to loot the bodies?" I want to play "Is it a good idea to loot the bodies?" Ghendar's example of deciding between escaping a disintegrating tower (I assume) and looting the body of a wizard makes for a much better scenario. Similarly, if the party kills some enemies and the others escape, the party must consciously decide whether to stop and loot the fallen or pursue the survivors.

This is all academic for me, by the way, because I simply handwave treasure acquisition in my campaigns. Every time the PCs in my campaign level up, they can swop out whatever gear they have for whatever new equipment they want, up to the standard wealth of a PC of their new level. Saves me the trouble of deciding where to place treasure and saves the players the trouble of remembering to loot the bodies.

 

[Mort]

There are a great many things that occur in an RPG that can be considered to go without saying. Did the characters have ample time and opportunity to loot the bodies? If so, then a DM might as well give them the benefit of the doubt. Many folks here seem to default to a punitive decision when all other things are equal, putting verisimilitude before satisfaction. Odd.

If there is ample time and opportunity to loot the bodies, there is probably ample time to go back and loot anyway (a forgotten dragon's lair isn't getting up and walking away).

The problem here is that time did matter:

Well, the thing is, the PCS encountered the evil NPCS on a well-traveled road frequently used by commoners, merchants, and such. It was about 5-hours later while they were in the town inn that they realized that they forgot.

In other words the PC's would likely have to waive away interested passerby while looting, maybe even a patrol of kings guards if the campaign had such. Would it be fair for the DM to pull this?:

PC1: "After the carnage we go back to town to get some needed rest!"
DM: "Hold on, as you loot the bodies of the villains, a patrol of guards approaches. Armed and expecting trouble."
DM as NPC Guard:"Some peasants said there was a battle occuring, what right do you have killing traveler's on the kings highway, explain yourselves!"
PC1: "What we didn't say anything about looting, we said we're taking a much needed rest in town. We're not going to carelessly loot on a patrolled road"
DM: "You keep saying you loot the bodies unless stated otherwise, you didn't state otherwise."

Assuming "loot unless stated otherwise - in all situations" can cause more problems than it solves.

 

[Felon]

verisimilitude = satisfaction

Satisfaction for yourself, or your group as a whole? If you're the DM, it's easy to watch the players dance on your strings. If a DM's players and are the constant victims of verisimilitude, they'd have to be pretty massochistic to deem that satisfying.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Satisfaction for yourself, or your group as a whole? If you're the DM, it's easy to watch the players dance on your strings. If a DM's players and are the constant victims of verisimilitude, they'd have to be pretty massochistic to deem that satisfying.

Huh?

I'm with Frank on this one. Satisfaction = verisimilitude for me and pretty much everyone I've ever played with, DMs and players alike.

 

[Felon]

I'm with Frank on this one. Satisfaction = verisimilitude for me and pretty much everyone I've ever played with, DMs and players alike.

"Everyone you've ever gamed with", eh? I humored frank's minimalist "satisfaction = verisimilitude" line, but if you're going over-the-top with it, I'd sure love to hear you explain what the heck it means...you know, with sentences, not mathematic equations.

As indicated in my first post, I'm referring to using verisimilitude as some sort of rationale for jerking the players around with punitive rulings, an attitude that has evidenced itself with certain posts in this discussion. It is pretty unreasonable to expect players to describe every action their character takes, no matter how routine. So, it's not reasonable to assume that if they don't say they did something, that automatically means they didn't do it; I suspect few DM's rule that characters might get kidney infections for not relieving themselves regularly.

 

[Musrum]

Really as a DM assuming that they did stuff when they didn't say it is infringing on their right to control their characters. If they didn't say they were looting and you said "As you start to pick up the scattered gold, your arms start to tingle. Make a fortitude save" You can bet you would hear protests that they had never said they were going to loot. Why should it be any different if the results would be positive?

Of course, if the treasure was trapped would you have reminded them to loot? If so, why didn't you remind them when there was no risk?