When Adventure Designers Cheat

[Shadeydm]

I think some of you are trying to label a thinking game as a guessing game which it is not. If the party has crossed the bread crumb trail twice and still don't follow it back to the witch's hose in time to save the children then I don't feel bad for them. If they keep trying to hack and slash a monster with a DR15 instead of playing defense and letting the casters deal with it I don't feel bad for them. If they insist on following up on a rumor of a dragon at the top of the lonely mountain I don't feel bad if they get eaten because it CR15 and they were 7th level sometime they need to think! Sometimes you need to make them think!

 

[Celebrim]

I'm in disagreement with this. As both a player and a DM, I have no problems with npcs cutting corners, I just like there to be a good reason...

Any DM worth his salt can always think of an explanation. But an explanation isn't a reason.

"Player: So, the npc is immune to fire, um why?
DM: Because he was sacrificed in a pyre to a fire god, but the fire god recognized his worth and allowed him to live, granted him immunity to fire and a few other benefits.
Player: Oh, cool."

This is an OOC conversation between the DM and the PC's which reveals in game information to the PC without an in game reason. My preferred approach:

Player: "So, the NPC is immune to fire, um why?"
DM: "Is he? Well, if he is, then that is probably a very good question. Perhaps you should investigate it."
Player: "Ok, I've got some Bardic knowledge, +6 in Knowledge (History), and +3 in gather information. First, I'll try to recall if thier are any stories..."

That said, in the sense you describe though, all creatures with a CR greater than 1 are 'cutting corners'. All you just did was apply a template ('god touched', 'fire touched', 'half-elemental' or whatever) to the bad guy. That's no different than granting an NPC character levels by fiat. It's not rather different from allowing dragons to breathe fire, but not PC's. But all that is quite a different thing from allowing a NPC with +X skil ranks do things that you refuse to let PC's with +X (or X+1) skil ranks dol, or pull off combat options without a feat which you then deny to the PC's, or perform magic which a PC of the same spell casting level would be denied, or do things without a skill check that you then require of the PC's. And its a quite different thing than throwing out all sense of order in the game world.

 

[Davmeister84]

I tend to "cheat" quite often while GMing, but only in ways that can be explained in-game. However, I won't give those explanations to the players, instead hoping that the mystery of it propels the PCs to finding out the in-game cause.

 

[Psion]

I think some of you are trying to label a thinking game as a guessing game which it is not.

I think some authors think their puzzles are reasonable when they are not.

If you are reading a mystery novel and cannot peice all the clues together, that's okay. The star detective will unveil the mystery at the end.

But in an RPG, you can't do this. I've seen some GMs boast how some puzzle they presented to the players was really obvious, but it's not. Any puzzle is obvious if you designed it.

If you design puzzle after puzzle and your players never get it, you should consider that the problem doesn't lie with your players.

There's a principle of mystery game design that shows up in many books and fora that adventure designers would do well to remember. The traditional way I hear it is "provide players with 3 times as many clues as they need to solve a mystery."

In Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering, regarding transitions between set peices, he says:

"You never want to create a situation where the adventure grinds to a halt if the heroes blow a specific roll or make a particular mistake. Always find multiple ways out of any possible dead end in a storyline."

I think that GMs -- and adventure writers -- are ill advised to ignore this advice.

If the party has crossed the bread crumb trail twice and still don't follow it back to the witch's hose in time to save the children then I don't feel bad for them. If they keep trying to hack and slash a monster with a DR15 instead of playing defense and letting the casters deal with it I don't feel bad for them. If they insist on following up on a rumor of a dragon at the top of the lonely mountain I don't feel bad if they get eaten because it CR15 and they were 7th level sometime they need to think! Sometimes you need to make them think!

Sure. But that strikes me as an almost entirely different topic than the one being argued with this thread.

 

[Piratecat]

Psion's right. I'll generally allow several ways around a given puzzle -- a brute force method, a clever method, and a roleplaying method. One is usually easier than the others, though.

 

[was]

Don't really care if they do, I usually change them anyway.

 

[Celebrim]

Reading through the thread, I notice a reoccuring complaint that 'such and such is not allowed for by the rules'.

This is simply bunk. Just about everything is allowed for in the rules. The limitation is not what is allowed by the rules, but what is allowed by the rules for an entity of a given ability.

Leaping tall buildings in a single bound is allowed by the rules. Leaping tall buildings in a single bound with only a +3 bonus to your jump skill is not.

There's no precedence for this in the rules; even if you create a spell called even more deeperer darkness that can suppress daylight, something like a miracle or disjunction should be able to light it up.

Maybe. Maybe not. Something like a miracle or a disjunction ought to be able to effect anything which is the result of a 9th level spell effect. But 9th level spell effects are not the limit of what the rules allow. If Even More Deeper Darkness is the result of Epic spell casting, or the result of the divine ability of a being with at least 1 divine rank, then there is every reason to think that a mere wish or miracle might only have a marginal effect or a chance to work, or - depending on what entity is behind Even More Deeper Darkness - no chance at all. Wishes and even miracles are not the absolute limit of power in the game. What I would object to however is a villain with 12th level spell casting ability creating some effect which the DM by fiat claims resists even a wish or miracle simply because the DM doesn't want the PC to use that resource to overcome the problem. In such cases, a spell casting PC has every right to complain, "Why can't I do that?"

If you don't want the PC's using thier resources to overcome the problem, you shouldn't give them to them. It's generally only fun to negate PC resources when they have so many resources that overcoming things by brute force is beginning to get dull for them. If your PC's have thier ability to fly removed by DM fiat (its a epic effect, its an alternate plane, whatever), and there is a certain new excitement and fear mixed into thier play that you haven't seen in a few levels, then you've pulled that trick from your big DM bag of tricks at the right time. If you are doing it because you have an antagonistic relationship with your PC's, and you can't turn PC resources against them with the same creativity that they have, maybe you should step from behind the screen for a while.

Lastly, there is in 3rd edition never any reason for old skool 1st edition absolute claims like, "nothing can harm the widget" or "no force can resist the irresitable object". Any 3rd edition designer worth his salt, wishing to enforce his puzzle or challenge and take away the obvious short cut need only set the DC of solving the challenge in that fashion above what is reasonable for a character of that level to solve. For example, DC's 30 or more above effective character level are impervious to all but the most narrowly created specialists. A hardness of 30 or more and a decent amount of hit points will prove immune to the brute efforts of all but very high level characters, especially with other defences in place to discourage that approach (for example, a level shocking grasp is triggered whenever the object is damaged, and the object has 50 such charges). You want a door that always shuts? Instead of saying, "It always shuts and no force can stop it", point out that it is a gargantuan object and has an effective strength of 60.

The important thing is to grant that the characters could duplicate such challenges had they equivalent resources as the challenges creator. The world should not work one way for the PC's and another for the NPC's. So long as it works in the same fashion for everyone, it's not cheating.

 

[Dykstrav]

Yeah, it's been my experience that you need to give a typical party an "ass kicking" out. Some players just won't get the puzzle, while others just don't want to figure a puzzle out. Even the really clever players sometimes want to munch chips and drink a beer while they roll dice and unwind.

I usually give the option of a tough way out through bulling through it and an easier way out through good roleplaying. Those who take the easier, RP-oriented solution get an XP award to discourage the idea that killing critters is the only way to get XP. In practice, most players end up wanting to take the RP-oriented way out as a matter of pride in their skill as players.

But still, providing difficult options is a far cry from ruling that certain abilities just don't work.

 

[Delta]

For example, last night we ran into an area that is cold enough to do environmental damage. Of course the first thing we did was cast mass resist energy against cold. However, according to the module, it's so cold here that no protective spell of any kind works. It's a special kind of cold that does automatic, unresistable damage. The only thing that protects are a specific kind of robe that we found-- nonmagical ones, just to increase the nonsense factor.

Another one I've seen a lot, in this and other adventures, is the absolutely impenetrable magical darkness where no light source of any kind works. It's special darkness, you can't light it no matter what, so there. (Or sometimes, the only light that works is the specific, special, unique magical torch that you were supposed to have found behind the secret door in Area #4q, six months ago.) There's no precedence for this in the rules; even if you create a spell called even more deeperer darkness that can suppress daylight, something like a miracle or disjunction should be able to light it up.

The discussion has moved quickly... but I agree with spunky, PC, and Q from the first page: sounds like you're playing module WG4. In fact, are you sure you're not playing 1E AD&D rules?

Perhaps you didn't know already (spoilers already on first 2 pages), but you are about 2 rooms away from the semi-dead prison of the most powerful evil god in the universe, who almost destroyed all of existence, until all the other gods ganged up against him (per Gygaxian 1E AD&D mythology). Call it an Epic or an Artifact effect, if you like.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

I don't mind it when a module has a particular effect for a specific reason. The purple robes of Tharizdun being an example. I'd rationalize it something like the following:

In the presence of a great unholy site dedicated to the dread god of oblivion there is a soul numbing cold. In such a place, those mad enough to wear the unholy vestments of the nihilistic faithful are physically protected - the promised destruction of their souls is already a worthy sacrifice. For a non-faithful to wear such a robe is a most profound blasphemy (with lots of roleplaying consequences, not only with enraged evil cultists but also amongst themselves, their morals, their patrons and their god).

That's a pretty good example but certainly there are lots of silly examples. People here have already pointed out the good and bad.