You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[Sword of Spirit]

My response as a DM depends on context. I try to build adventures which will produce a certain experience that I hope will be enjoyable for all concerned. I don’t like to customize challenges to the PCs in such a way as to invalidate my adventures should they get creative, but I can’t plan for everything.

Here is an example of fun had by all:

The party was fighting a black dragon, and doing poorly. The wizard had managed to get himself into melee, and wasn’t able to teleport away (I assume he had cast his spells already, since he usually prepared it). But he did have an amulet of the planes. Using said amulet, he touched the dragon and teleported them both to the Elemental Plane of Earth. The next turn, he teleported himself back, leaving the dragon encased in earth.

I still remember that trick fondly. I hadn’t anticipated anyone using an amulet of the planes as an attack. There’s no reason I’d have to forbid that in the future either.

Here is an example of less than fun had by all:

Same campaign. The party had been directed to see a certain NPC in the Endless Dread Dire Swamp (which was truly endless, since it was a small planet—yes, basically Dagobah). My plan was to have the party travel through this swamp filled with giant XP-rich critters to power-level up the party for a wise purpose I have since forgotten. Unfortunately, the same wizard decided that instead of spending our nights getting ambushed by raptors and dire animals and black dragons, he’d rather just spend an hour staring at the ground, planeshift us to the Outlands, teleport us near the Elysium gate-town to the comfy home of the half-celestial in our party, let everyone have a good night’s rest, and then in the morning planeshift us back to the swamp and teleport us back to the (now familiar) location from the night before—then continue our journey. This rather destroyed the mood I was going for, and I don’t think having the destination NPC insist that they actually physically travel both to and from the location of the herbs he sent them to gather before he would assist them really did much to fix it for either me or the player.

I think that may have highlighted a difference in interest there. If the player really wasn’t going to have fun slogging through the swamp having a good ol’ fashion hack n’ slash I should just accept that and let him short circuit it.

I also like to allow the chips to fall where they may when it comes to broken creative solutions, the first time. After that I tend to have the Reality Police close the loopholes so it doesn’t continue to be an issue. For that reason, I’m pretty liberal in what I will allow at the table. I just reserve the right to come up with an excuse for why it won’t work again if players want to abuse it by overusing it to the point where it seems absurd or no longer fun.

As a player I’m sometimes frustrated when I don’t feel like my choices allow me to increase my chances of success. See, I play as a defensive “turtler.” The DM I’m playing with tends to enjoy presenting us standard encounters that would be treated as “difficult” in the DMG, topped off by truly nasty boss battles. I’ve realized that there is simply a disconnect between the level of challenge I enjoy on a regular basis and the level that my DM enjoys (even when he’s a player). So to counteract that, I put a lot of resources into trying to lower that challenge. What frustrates me is when he simply escalates his challenges to respond to my preparations. And I don’t do cheesy preparations, I promise. I’m generally simply thorough. Like making sure everyone has the right mundane equipment, in redundant quantities. Or planning mundane methods of communication that don’t involve making a lot of noise. Or expecting that the prevalence of things like shops you are looking for or amount of treasure in rich manors would actually make sense rather than being scanty because too much of it would make it too easy for us.

I don’t like having the feeling that I’m only getting a 10% increase in effectiveness due to my creative choices when I should be getting a 50% increase based on in-world believability.

Going through all this, it makes me realize that my DM and I should probably discuss this so we can work out a way of dealing with it that we can both be happy with.

So perhaps it all (the topic of the thread) comes down to a matter of player-DM communication. The assumptions for the game need to be made clear and agreed upon, and there needs to be some way (outside of people just getting upset with each other at the table) for anyone to send the message to the rest of the group that something going on just isn’t adding to the fun. It’s all social contract, which D&D at least, is woefully inadequate at actually addressing in any formal manner.

 

[Hussar]

Going through all this, it makes me realize that my DM and I should probably discuss this so we can work out a way of dealing with it that we can both be happy with.

So perhaps it all (the topic of the thread) comes down to a matter of player-DM communication. The assumptions for the game need to be made clear and agreed upon, and there needs to be some way (outside of people just getting upset with each other at the table) for anyone to send the message to the rest of the group that something going on just isn’t adding to the fun. It’s all social contract, which D&D at least, is woefully inadequate at actually addressing in any formal manner.

Oh yeah. Totally agree with this.

I've come to realize that many, MANY of the issues I've had in the past could have been resolved with a conversation over beverages after the game. That and the realization that not every game is something I should play. There is absolutely no problem with bowing out of a game.

 

[Celebrim]

The party was fighting a black dragon, and doing poorly. The wizard had managed to get himself into melee, and wasn’t able to teleport away (I assume he had cast his spells already, since he usually prepared it). But he did have an amulet of the planes. Using said amulet, he touched the dragon and teleported them both to the Elemental Plane of Earth. The next turn, he teleported himself back, leaving the dragon encased in earth.

In 1e, that trick wasn't possible, since the amulet only effected the wearer and could not be used to transport anyone else. In 2e, that trick still wasn't possible - the 2e version is almost identically worded to the 1e version except for the names of the planes. In 3e, that trick also wasn't possible. In 3e, the amulet allows the player to cast 'Plane Shift' which can be used per its description as a touch attack (this is why if you were surprised by this, every DM should study intently any magic item that enters the campaign). It's a 7th level spell, save negates, and at 7th level a touch attack spell can have any effect equivalent to 'save or die'. So, first the Black Dragon gets to use a saving throw to resist a 7th level spell. Assuming that happened, if the PC planeshifted with the Dragon the DM than the PC must be able to survive arrival there. I know many DMs would rule that if you arrive on the elemental plane of earth without some sort of planar protection/adaptation, you're just dead. And some which aren't so brutal would rule that you now can't breath (no air), can't talk (no air, and also your face is encased in solid stone), and therefore cannot audibly say the command word required to use the device. Others might require a concentration check to say the word correctly while applying suffocation rules. All are valid rulings provided they are consistant. But even if the PC could planeshift back, which isn't a given, he couldn't 'teleport' back. Instead he planeshifts back, arriving in a random direction 5d100 miles from his intended destination. That could be inconvenient. Fortunately, in 3e there was no need to transport the player with the Dragon in the first place. You can just directly banish him to another plane.

I still remember that trick fondly.

That's sometimes the important part though. The rule of cool sometimes trumps the rules.

Unfortunately, the same wizard decided that instead of spending our nights getting ambushed by raptors and dire animals and black dragons, he’d rather just spend an hour staring at the ground, planeshift us to the Outlands, teleport us near the Elysium gate-town to the comfy home of the half-celestial in our party, let everyone have a good night’s rest, and then in the morning planeshift us back to the swamp and teleport us back to the (now familiar) location from the night before—then continue our journey.

Lesson: high level players can't be forced to wilderness trek in anything like a normal wilderness because they can camp whereever they like. You've got to roll with that.

I think that may have highlighted a difference in interest there. If the player really wasn’t going to have fun slogging through the swamp having a good ol’ fashion hack n’ slash I should just accept that and let him short circuit it.

I'm not sure it is a question of whether he would have fun. It's just that you can't expect a player not to use all of his available resources to his advantage.

So to counteract that, I put a lot of resources into trying to lower that challenge. What frustrates me is when he simply escalates his challenges to respond to my preparations.

This is the cause of one of the few times I really walked away from a DM, one I had really enjoyed playing with. It was the experience of finding that whatever danger I prepared for, I would face because the DM was creating all the defenses in responce to my actions. Traps sometimes existed if you didn't search for them, but they ALWAYS existed if you did search for them. And I'm not talking about searching every step, I'm talking about searching things that you'd reasonably expect to have traps like chests or doors. Thus, I learned you discovered less traps if you didn't search for them, and so it was far better just to occasionally spring one and let the DM say, "You should have checked for traps". Meanwhile, monsters sometimes were present when you didn't expect it, but ALWAYS existed in and in greater numbers the more you prepared. It was the exact opposite of rewarding skill play. I got to do the ultimate test. The same environment completely reconfigured itself for two different parties. A corridor full of traps that would have turned the fighters to mince meat, transformed into a corridor full of monsters that would have turned my thief to mince meat. But the problem was that also meant that there was no fixed challenge facing me. It was like a DM inventing Tomb of Horrors on the fly where he got to decide everything you did was wrong on the fly. I actually loved Tomb of Horrors because there were discoverable 'right answers', but its impossible to improv Tomb of Horrors or to play in an improv Tomb of Horrors.

Going through all this, it makes me realize that my DM and I should probably discuss this so we can work out a way of dealing with it that we can both be happy with.

Absolutely

 

[pemerton]

So perhaps it all (the topic of the thread) comes down to a matter of player-DM communication. The assumptions for the game need to be made clear and agreed upon, and there needs to be some way (outside of people just getting upset with each other at the table) for anyone to send the message to the rest of the group that something going on just isn’t adding to the fun.

That sounds right to me.

 

[MarkB]

So perhaps it all (the topic of the thread) comes down to a matter of player-DM communication. The assumptions for the game need to be made clear and agreed upon, and there needs to be some way (outside of people just getting upset with each other at the table) for anyone to send the message to the rest of the group that something going on just isn’t adding to the fun. It’s all social contract, which D&D at least, is woefully inadequate at actually addressing in any formal manner.

Yeah, that's a major issue. If there's one thing the anecdotes on this thread and their subsequent dissection makes clear, it's that the line between a politely-raised flag of protest and an act of passive-aggressive obstructionism is often a thin, blurry and subjective one, prone to misinterpretation.

 

[Celebrim]

So, we advertise and whatnot and get a dozen or so applicants. We only had enough money for about 6, so, I said, "Well, we pick the best six and move on." No go. The DM insisted that we interview each and every NPC and decide for ourselves. So, about a third of a session later, we finally have our six troopies and now I'm fuming because I'm so frustrated. Next we have to equip them because none of them have weapons. Fair enough, large city, I hand the DM a shopping list. Again, no go. We have to actually go to the weapons shop and buy stuff, complete with lengthy conversation with said shop owner.

Now we've blown through about half a session on things that I absolutely had no interest in.

From my point of view, I wanted six hirelings, they would do this one thing and go away. That was it. I wouldn't begrudge a few minutes of get to know them, but, honestly, since we already had a goal (kill the grell and move forward), I simply wasn't interested in what the DM wanted. But, since I completely lacked any means of moving things along, I couldn't reframe the scene in any fashion and had to go along with the DM.

Without being able to get into the head of the DM, I'm not sure what to make of this. Generally speaking, my rule is, "If I don't think anything significant or fun is going to happen and the players also are in agreement, handwave the passage of time and get on with it." I'll often pause for a bit to see if the players have any significant input or plans of their own in a scene, and if the pause becomes extended silence, then I'll cut to the next important event that I think would occur.

In my present campaign, I've pretty much had six players the whole campaign. Six is a pretty big party, and the more players you have the less time you can spend on each players affairs. For that reason, I've got a standing 'shopping is done OOC unless I say otherwise' rule. I try to get any shopping done in four or five sentences. But, if the party actually wanted to get hirelings, I'd probably play out the interviews too. The primary reason is something apparant in your attitude toward the hirelings in your story - you consider them game peices, tools to be used to overcome an in game problem, and are primarily viewing them on a metalevel. If that is occuring, I would know that there is fundamental disconnect occuring between how the player is experiencing my game world and how I would like them to experience my game world. To put a fine point on it, I would think you weren't playing the game right (for my values of right) and I'd want to try to alter your perception of what it meant to play the game. Or, to take that even one step further, I'd be trying to figure out if it was even worth my time - and yours - for us to be playing together.

In the game I'm trying to create, I want a player to never think of an NPC as a game construct. I really want players to consider NPCs living breathing human being with rights and feelings, and I really want to get them to consider consciously how their character would view this person and by extension how they would view this person. If that isn't going on, then I believe my game is to some extent a failure. We may be having fun, but we aren't achieving for me nearly the level of fun (for me) that I know from experience is possible.

So for me shopping for and equipping the hirelings wouldn't be important and would be handwaved, but you can be absolutely sure that I'd on the fly turn every hireling into a 'seven sentence NPC', give them unique abilities, give them an alignment I would try to hide, try to characterize them, try to play several with comic personalities, try to play several with annoying traits, try to give them unique motivations (including actualizing statements like, "I need the money for my family"), try to make a couple intriguing with markers I could use to later flesh out a backstory, try to give them hooks (one is secretly a wanted for a crime, one is the lover of another interviewee, another is hated rival, another isn't who he claims to be, one has a crush on one of the NPCs, etc.) and so forth.

In other words, I'd be angling for all the following:

a) Make the players think about the moral value of treating humans as disposable, giving people money to risk your life for you, etc.
b) Make them rethink simply dismissing the hireling because of the value added by the hireling to the game, or at least make them there 'go to' hireling. In other words, try to make one at least into a reoccuring memorable NPC.
c) Make the choices matter.

I'd be doing this for both in game (simulationist) and out of game (gamist) reasons. On one hand, I'm insisting that my world be treated as being in some way 'real' and so it has realistic features. On the other hand, I have certain goals I'd like to achieve so as to maximize the game's fun for me, and this includes emotional investment in outcomes other than 'winning'/'losing'. For one thing, as the DM, you are playing to 'lose'. Winning has negative emotional value.

This sort of thing doesn't happen when I run games and I don't play with DM's like this anymore.

As I said earlier, I don't believe we should try to play together. That wasn't (entirely) meant as snark. I think our gaming goals are just vastly different. We have vastly different notions of what a game is, how a game is played, what is fun in a game, and what contitutes the maximum derivable enjoyment.

Celebrim, you asked how players can reframe scenes and this is how I would have done the above. When the players have a clear goal, then if they indicate they are not interested in deviating from that, then I don't force the issue. Instead of the "Get to know the local color and people" scene, I scrap that scene and move on.

I've scrapped a campaign before when it was clear, after six or seven sessions, that the group of players weren't remotely interested in anything I care about. Several wanted me to keep playing, but after the third boring session in a row and clear lack of what I consider player engagement, I couldn't handle it any more.

Again, without knowing what the DM was thinking, I can't judge, but even the shopping scene is potentially something I wouldn't skip over if I was laying groundwork for later events I knew were going to occur. I also might run at lower granularity if I didn't want to give the players meta information about what was important. In the current campaign, very early on I ran a trivial scene with the PC cleric bumping into his neighbor, who was an undertaker, and general 'polite conversation' including the neighbor trying to sell the PC on buying a coffin and a plot before he died so as to not be a burden on his loved ones in the event of untimely death and so forth. I ran a lot of other trivial scenes like that, including repeated conversions with the polite helpful undertaker Mr. Findel. Why?

Because the first TWO YEARS and 40+ sessions revolved around chasing down a terrible necromancer named Tarkus and 30 sessions in, after the players finally started putting two and two together and asking questions about Mr. Findel, they realized that Mr. Findel - that minor local color NPC - was Tarkus (at that point the most important NPC in the game). Now that was one of the single most successful reveals I've pulled off in 30 years of gaming, and that level of awesomeness is simply impossible playing the game your way.

Sometimes as a DM you can't explain why you are doing what you do without ruining it. My players trust that if I'm not hand waving things, it might not be immediately apparant why I'm playing through an entire session with zero combat and nothing but local color, but that I have a good reason. That at least is my defense; whether it applies in your case I don't know. But in my game, if the player repeatedly tries to thwart me and I can't seem to win their trust and we don't seem to agree on what makes a game fun, I'm goiong to want them to quit and stop ruining my game for everyone else. And its quite possible that that is what I'm going to be 'signaling' to the player.

IOW, the players through informal flags (thanks Pemerton for that term, it makes good sense) can reframe virtually any individual scene in any direction. Considerations like, "How would this realistically work?" as in the centepede train example, simply aren't something I even think about any more. If the players wanted to get into that consideration, they would raise flags by tying themselves to the centipede, crafting make shift saddles, talking about skills, whatever. OTOH, since the player said, "I summon the centipede, it should take us three days to get to the city", that's a pretty clear flag that "Dive into the details of travel" is probably not on the menu at this time.

I don't let players decide what is on the menu. I give them a menu, and let them choose what they want to eat. But if they want to change the menu, I tell them to go find a different restuarant because we serve what I'm interested in preparing and that's the way it works. If I hand them a menu and they say, "I don't need a menu. I want a cheeseburger. You know, ketchup, pickles, diced steamed onions, real yellow mustard and not that brown kind with the seeds in it.", I'm like, "Yeah, I know what you want. I've eaten those occasionally too. But if you don't want to try what's on offer you are definately in the wrong place, sir."

 

[Sword of Spirit]

In 1e, that trick wasn't possible, since the amulet only effected the wearer and could not be used to transport anyone else. In 2e, that trick still wasn't possible - the 2e version is almost identically worded to the 1e version except for the names of the planes. In 3e, that trick also wasn't possible. In 3e, the amulet allows the player to cast 'Plane Shift' which can be used per its description as a touch attack (this is why if you were surprised by this, every DM should study intently any magic item that enters the campaign). It's a 7th level spell, save negates, and at 7th level a touch attack spell can have any effect equivalent to 'save or die'. So, first the Black Dragon gets to use a saving throw to resist a 7th level spell. Assuming that happened, if the PC planeshifted with the Dragon the DM than the PC must be able to survive arrival there. I know many DMs would rule that if you arrive on the elemental plane of earth without some sort of planar protection/adaptation, you're just dead. And some which aren't so brutal would rule that you now can't breath (no air), can't talk (no air, and also your face is encased in solid stone), and therefore cannot audibly say the command word required to use the device. Others might require a concentration check to say the word correctly while applying suffocation rules. All are valid rulings provided they are consistant. But even if the PC could planeshift back, which isn't a given, he couldn't 'teleport' back. Instead he planeshifts back, arriving in a random direction 5d100 miles from his intended destination. That could be inconvenient.
]Fortunately, in 3e there was no need to transport the player with the Dragon in the first place. You can just directly banish him to another plane.

It was 3e. The only area where the rules were a bit fuzzy to us is whether or not the touch attack also transported the caster. Looking at the wording again, it does seem to say that the multiple target version requires willing targets. Perhaps I didn't like the idea of a banishment like effect from planeshift, or the player preferred to take his character with him (it's possible that dragon #2 was still alive and in the fight at that point, making a temporary withdrawal on his point a decent idea). The strictest reading of the rules wouldn't appear to allow both the caster and an unwilling target to travel together. I think I'd probably house rule that, because it doesn't really make the spell more powerful but does make it more fun. There was a successful touch attack and a failed saving throw involved, and the wizard had levels in planeshifter, so he could survive there just fine. Yes, the random destination is one of the things I love about that spell. He used the amulet to shift back and then teleported to rejoin the party at some point.

Lesson: high level players can't be forced to wilderness trek in anything like a normal wilderness because they can camp whereever they like. You've got to roll with that.

Yep. Since I like to allow high level characters to make use of their abilities, but I also like to delay the ability to be anywhere you want to, I later ended up house ruling travel spells to change some levels and effects. You can still do all the same stuff, but you have to wait a couple of levels for some of it, and some of it is a bit less certain. Worked for me.

This is the cause of one of the few times I really walked away from a DM, one I had really enjoyed playing with. It was the experience of finding that whatever danger I prepared for, I would face because the DM was creating all the defenses in responce to my actions. Traps sometimes existed if you didn't search for them, but they ALWAYS existed if you did search for them. And I'm not talking about searching every step, I'm talking about searching things that you'd reasonably expect to have traps like chests or doors. Thus, I learned you discovered less traps if you didn't search for them, and so it was far better just to occasionally spring one and let the DM say, "You should have checked for traps". Meanwhile, monsters sometimes were present when you didn't expect it, but ALWAYS existed in and in greater numbers the more you prepared. It was the exact opposite of rewarding skill play. I got to do the ultimate test. The same environment completely reconfigured itself for two different parties. A corridor full of traps that would have turned the fighters to mince meat, transformed into a corridor full of monsters that would have turned my thief to mince meat. But the problem was that also meant that there was no fixed challenge facing me. It was like a DM inventing Tomb of Horrors on the fly where he got to decide everything you did was wrong on the fly. I actually loved Tomb of Horrors because there were discoverable 'right answers', but its impossible to improv Tomb of Horrors or to play in an improv Tomb of Horrors.

Yeah, I think I'd have a problem with that.

Since my DM and I are starting up a shared alternating DMing thing for an extra monthly campaign, I have a chance to show instead of tell him what I'm hoping to see. I'm pretty excited about that. We also have had to really delve into how we (as a group) want things to be done, including in-depth discussions between us, and shorter but still important discussions with the other players. Consequently, the expectations for the campaign are crystal clear and agreed upon for everyone. We've debated how to do our house rules, voted on differences of opinions, made sure characters have in-world connections and the party is balanced, discussed DMing etiquette (other players are welcome to share the load if they like), zeroed in on the themes that are appropriate, and set boundaries so as not to trespass on other DMs or PCs. So for the first time we have directly created a social contract.

 

[Thrahxis]

As a DM I love surprises. When players pull things out of their rump or do something unexpected it's great and adds to the game, at least from my perspective. I rather enjoy thinking on my feet when the players do the unexpected.

The only issues I have are with players that purposely throw monkey wrenches into the mix just because they want to make things difficult. There's a distinct difference between being creative and spiking the punch every night so to speak. Purposely trying to make a DM sweat for no other reason than you want to see the man (or woman) suffer is fine once in a while but when it's constant that's obviously going to eat away at the DMs ability to enjoy the game. Even worse are the individuals that when trying to find creative uses for items, spells, etc, turn said action into a rules lawyering debate. Although, I'm perfectly fine with creativity or even using something other than the way it was intended.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, that's a major issue. If there's one thing the anecdotes on this thread and their subsequent dissection makes clear, it's that the line between a politely-raised flag of protest and an act of passive-aggressive obstructionism is often a thin, blurry and subjective one, prone to misinterpretation.

Very, very true.

/Snippage of stuff that I agree with

I don't let players decide what is on the menu. I give them a menu, and let them choose what they want to eat.

Yeah, I'm not really like that anymore. Granted, I do start off with a fairly strong theme of whatever the campaign is, but, by and large, I'm pretty happy if they take the bull by the horns and head off into the distance.

So, if the players don't want to engage in something I've put in front of them, I'm more than willing to pull the ripcord and go to the next offering.

 

[JustinAlexander]

Example: Facing a Baselisk, I used Dust of Disappearance, on the Baselisk himself. His Gaze attack requires that you be able to see his eyes, after all. Thus began a debate about whether or not there was or should be a Save against that, when the target is unwilling.

That must have been a pretty short debate. Dust of disappearance works like greater invisibility, greater invisibility allows a saving throw. And, oh yeah, the rules for gaze attacks specifically state the invisible creatures can't use them. End of discussion, right?

So this is pretty much as "surprising" to me as a player saying "I swing my sword at it": It's a situation completely covered by the rules and the adjudication is obvious.

For actual creative thinking that isn't covered by the rules, I think the answer is similarly a no-brainer: You want to encourage that in pretty much every way possible.