Stop being so paranoid

[El Mahdi]

Right, but that's appropriately paranoid.

. . .

My point was that there's nothing wrong with paranoia (in game or out of game ) given the right situation for it.

Agreed. If someone was seriously afraid they were going to be poisoned when some guy behind a bar in the good ole USA said "What's your poison?", that would be sufficiently over paranoid. That is unless that person was able to see the world for what it really is. You know, ruled by Cthulu and all. Then I think his paranoia would be completely justified.

 

[baradtgnome]

The DM can certainly set the tone at the beginning of the campaign on how 'paranoid' the players need to be. If traps are scattered about randomly, or in a logic pattern the players do not come to understand, then the players will behave like every square foot of adventure could be trapped. The more deadly the traps the greater the paranoia. Sure the logic could seem easy to you as DM, but sometimes it is not as clear as you think it is. Sure players could bring their paranoia from previous campaigns/DMS, sure players could just be wussy paranoids; but I think mostly the DM sets the tone.

If players are rewarded for bold behavior, then you will get more bold behavior. If players are rewarded for befriending NPCs, they will befriend them. Clues may or may not be discovered for a trap or double crossing NPC before it is too late. I find it helpful if the players discover the clues after the fact if they miss them; this way they come to understand they 'could' have found the clue and I am not a merciless random rat bastard character killing machine. I am not random. Usually. Hardly ever. Really.

Is paranoia the problem? Or is it the effect it has on speed of game play. As was aptly stated by a number of posters, if you want paranoia then work on the effecient character methods of testing for problems. Many fine examples were presented that would help speed up play.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

As soon as someone mentions statues in a room, the party begins surrounding it/them, because they know that they are going to come to life and attack. No spot checks or knowledge checks are ever rolled.

My Iron Heroes party was carefully picking their way through a room full of statues, taking up tons of real time to go through a 30x20ft room. Then a bunch of hungry Gricks ambushed them. The statues were just statues.

Long time ago, we were playing Mechwarrior, and one of the party was just strolling down the street, like on shore leave. In a garrisoned town that hadn't seen war for a long time. He gets into a scuffle and pulls a full sized shotgun from under his coat. So much for a little bit of fisticuffs.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

It hasn't happened to me before, but if the players ever showed excessive caution like that, I would be sorely tempted to do the following in a large dungeon complex:

"You hear footsteps approaching."
"We hide."
"From your hiding place, you see what appears to be another adventuring group heading for the exist. They seem to have several big bags filled with valuables with them.

Well, I guess they were faster..."

 

[Hammerhead]

I think a group's level of paranoia rises and falls according to the campaign. I mean, if assassins attack them while sleeping at inns, then yeah, they're going to start posting guards if they don't already. In my games, my players generally accept that 'safe' territory is typically safe; if they do get attacked while in town, chances are they'll see it coming. If you have currently have a problem with excess paranoia, then a previous game is probably to blame.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

To use a real life example, would you expect the soldiers in Iraq to drive carelessly on lonely desert roads or simply kick in the door and charge in when checking suspected terrorist hideouts because checking for IEDs is too paranoid?

Absolutely not. But that's real life, and I'm playing what I hope is a fun and exciting game - huge difference.

I don't judge my players on whether or not they're acting like a highly-trained military squad, and they don't play like it.

However - I'd love to play with a group of player who did play like this, so long as they did it quickly (in terms of making decisions as players).

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Absolutely not. But that's real life, and I'm playing what I hope is a fun and exciting game - huge difference.

I don't judge my players on whether or not they're acting like a highly-trained military squad, and they don't play like it.

However - I'd love to play with a group of player who did play like this, so long as they did it quickly (in terms of making decisions as players).

I don't mean to pick on you, but it's amazing how quickly that's reversed when a number of people that have stated how much they're against this is asked about combat.

I think that's the issue - in D&D, traps used to be a full part of the game. Nowadays, people just see them as filler between fights.

 

[Leatherhead]

Player paranoia is a terrible descendant of a sort of game that I think isn't any fun. It comes from an approach to the game as a giant puzzle without regard for character or story, which I feel are the two most important elements in a game.

Anyway,

Since the second edition days, I've been saying, "If you're not going to open that door, then quit adventuring and go home!"

I like puzzles. To be honest rpgs are the only form of puzzles where there is a right answer, a wrong answer, and a completely out of nowhere answer, that all happen to work somehow.

It is an aspect of games that is all too often thrown to the side nowadays.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I don't mean to pick on you, but it's amazing how quickly that's reversed when a number of people that have stated how much they're against this is asked about combat.

I think that's the issue - in D&D, traps used to be a full part of the game. Nowadays, people just see them as filler between fights.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying. I'm against players being paranoid out of combat, but expect them to be paranoid in combat? Can you clarify what you mean by this - I'm not following you.

In combat or out of combat - I expect my players to function, but no more. I play a light-hearted game, heavy on "fun" - beer'n'pretzels if that's an easier way of visualising it. I'm not trying to kill the players too much, I prefer just to let the dice roll where they may and assume that the published adventures are at about the right difficulty. They killed Irontooth OK, so so far it's going well.

In terms of traps - if I was writing my own adventures then I'd sprinkle in a trap where appropriate, and I'd be likely to include it as part of a larger encounter, rather than filler. For example, no kobold encounter would be complete without at least one trap or warning system. Possibly even devils and demons would have complex magical wards to help them repel an attack. I certainly don't consider them just filler.

 

[billd91]

I think that's the issue - in D&D, traps used to be a full part of the game. Nowadays, people just see them as filler between fights.

If that's the case, then I believe it's because they have been used as filler too often. Traps should be rationally placed (according to the minds of the people who placed them, so we have to allow for some idiosyncrasy) and too often they just seem to be scattered around, lethal to the normal movement of dungeon denizens who are supposed to be there as well as adventurers.
Hell, I even remember the thrill of reading Grimtooth's Traps and wedging some of the fun ones in dungeons just to have them there... even if they didn't make any sense.