You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[pemerton]

OK, as an open question on the "Players should get to decide what parts of the campaign we explore and which get bruched aside into background" theory.

Assume five players. One dislikes playing out overland travel (that's not the characters' goal, just getting there - get on with it!). A second dislikes dungeon crawls (underground labyrinths are just old school character grinds - make with the storyline already). A third detests social interaction (enough of the GM's improv acting - on with the game!). The fourth detests mysteries, puzzles and riddles (fine for Doyle to write Sherlock Holmes, but he's the character, not the player, and you're no Doyle - let the character roll against his great skills to solve it), while the fifth gets bored in combat (it's about the character, not the mechanics).

So, describe for me the game to be run for this group.

With difficulty, as Hussar said.

But that doesn't show that player-driven games aren't possible. It just shows that they have more or less optimal conditions.

 

[JustinAlexander]

The vast, overwhelming majority of wondrous items that do replicate spells specifically list the save...

Let's see if that's true. All of the wondrous items in the SRD that replicate a spell which allows for a saving throw:

[sblock]
Amulet of the Planes - No
Amulet of Proof Against Detection and Location - No (harmless)
Bead of Force - Yes
Boots of Speed - No
Boots of Teleportation - No
Boots of the Winterlands - No (harmless)
Boots, Winged - No (harmless)
Broom of Flying - No (harmless)
Candle of Truth - Yes
Cape of the Mountebank - No (harmless)
Carpet of Flying - No (harmless)
Chaos Diamond - No
Cloak of Arachnida - No (harmless)
Cloak of Displacement, Minor - No (harmless)
Cloak of Displacement, Major - No (harmless)
Crystal Ball - Yes
Darkskull - No
Deck of Illusions - No
Drums of Panic - Yes
Dust of Disappearance - No (harmless)
Elixir of Love - Yes
Eyes of Charming - Yes
Eyes of Doom - Yes
Figurine of Wondrous Power - Obsidian Steed - No (harmless)
Gem of Seeing - No (harmless)
Harp of Charming - Yes
Helm of Brilliance - Yes
Helm of Telepathy - Yes
Helm of Teleportation - No
Horn of Goodness/Evil - No
Horn of the Tritons - Yes
Mask of the Skull - Yes
Medallion of Thoughts - No
Necklace of Fireballs - Yes
Orb of Storms - No
Pipes of Pain - No
Pipes of Sounding - No
Restorative Ointment - No (harmless)
Salve of Slipperiness - No
Stone Slave - No (harmless)
Strand of Prayer Beads - Yes
Wind Fan - No
[/sblock]

Okay, let's total those up.

Wondrous Items that Specifically List the Save: 15
Wondrous Items that DON'T Specifically List the Save: 30

Wow. You are, yet again, spectacularly wrong.

What if we eliminate the items which replicate spells that are listed as "harmless"? You wouldn't want to do this anyway, of course, because it would completely undermine your argument about dust of disappearance. But let's see what happens:

Wondrous Items that Specifically List the Save: 15
Wondrous Items that DON'T Specifically List the Save: 15
Wondrous Items that DON'T Specifically List the (Harmless) Save: 15

Dang. You're still wrong.

Look, I'm going to be a little blunt here: You've made two embarrassingly erroneous claims about what the rulebooks say. Last time you stuck your fingers in your ears and pretended it didn't matter. I'd recommend choosing a smarter course of action this time around.

And next time you make a claim about what the DMG does or does not say, take a second to actually crack open the cover of the book and check to see if you're right or not.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is advocating antagonism between participants at all. He seems to be advocating a form of gamism. It's local form, here, is "The grell won first time. Now we want revenge." It's general form, of which this local occurence is an instance, is "The GM frames challenges. The players overcome them. The action resolution rules are the medium of the struggle, constrained by (i) encounter building rules on the GM side, and (ii) PC building rules on the player side."

But this is precisely antagonism. Gamism is defined as: "Gamist refers to decisions based on satisfying clear predefined goal conditions in the face of adversity: in other words, on the desire to win." In its pure form in a D&D context, this expresses itself as game which has the DM on one side and the PC's on the other. And seriously, how many times as Hussar openly expressed that he had a right to be 'grumpy', 'shirty', 'angry', or 'indignant' by the DM not following the rules as he saw them? Isn't he telling us stories about how that has happened at his table? If that isn't antagonism, what is it?

That his table has an almost purist for game stance itself isn't surprising. What is surprising is finding in a gamist context this notion Hussar is advocating for of the players being able to signal to the DM that the players are allowed to skip a particular challenge. What he's talking about isn't a broad sandboxy approach in which the players set the goals (though it may include that to some measure), but rather being able to determine the actual events of play. It seems like Hussar is saying, "If PC's only want to play out combat encounters, then everything else should be handwaved and we should only jump from important combat encounter to combat encounter."

This is such a typical way of playing RPGs that I'm a bit surprised you find it surprising.

I've never encountered it. I've seen antagonism. I've had gamist players. I've never had anyone assert that a player had the right to boil a game down to a series of tactical combat encounters and handwave everything else. I guess the closest I have seen to this is games that were played on a pure hack and slash level, and they usually involved old school dungeon crawling with zero deviation from that model. That is to say, they structured the game universe in such a way that it actually only had the elements of play they were intereted in. This however is along the lines of, "It's ok if you have towns and wildernesses, just so long as you understand that isn't where the game takes place." They are accepting a game universe that has elements of play they aren't interested in, but dealing with it (or not, see Hussar's frustration) by giving players a veto over whether or not those elements of play may actually interact with the character. That is novel to say the least, and I can't help but think that it is never going to run smoothly.

You contention that it makes challenges impossible is not correct, however. You seem not to be distinguishing between the rules that govern encounter building and the rules that govern action resolution - which, as I noted above, are the "medium of the struggle".

The 'rules' that govern encounter building are exceptionally loose and we would be better off describing them as guidelines, and really only occur in certain systems. In any event, they don't result in anything like an equal "medium of struggle". The assumption here, unspoken at the table, is that the DM is going to pretend to try to win, but not really. Personally, I find RPGs wholly unsuited both as a DM and a player to being pure gamist constructs. Too much bias is involved in adjudicating them, whether intentional or unintentional, to make an RPG tournament really interesting as a pure contest of skill. I don't think you could ever rate a player of D&D in the way you could rate a play of Chess or Call of Duty or Tennis.

On a failed roll, the GM is expected to narrate the situation in such a way as to maximise the interest, for those at the table, of the ensuign debacle - with options including things like "As you draw your knife, a nearby noblewoman notices the glint of steel and shrieks in horror" to "As you withdraw your knife the body crumples at your feet, and before you can step away the Baron's gaze falls upon you with your bloody knife in your hand" to "Your knife strikes true, and you step away before anyone see that it was you who wielded the blade - but your companion Ivan catches the falling body, and blood stains his clothes, and now the crowd is drawing his knife from his belt and noting the bloodstains on it, ignoring his protestations that they re from an earlier altercation outside the ballroom."

None of that seems particularly distinguishable from narrating the ensuing debacle. I can presume that being caught red handed with a bloody knife in the middle of a masquerade ball is going to have a level of interest to it, and I of course do advocate and prefer a mere literary or evocative approach to game master narration of outcome to facillitate player engagement.

A related example is this - should the assassin, or perhaps his friend Ivan, end up in prison, then of course it should be their sowrm enemy who comes to gloat over them, and offer to secure their freedom if only they will . . . <insert key demand on which the PC has, up until this point, refused to yield to his/her sworn enemy>.

To me, this depends on the details of the game universe I've set up. All those things may well occur and probably something will occur. The question is, "Does the player get to narrate to me how he escapes a scene or what the NPC may legitimately demand?" That is to say, how much control does the player get over what the DM may narrate as an outcome? The ability to control what the DM may narrate is really what separates simulation from narrativism. But even saying that, since we've already established that the table has a purist for game approach, isn't discussing the relevance sort of narrativism already a sign of incoherence?

All of this is about changing and evolving the ingame situation to fit and respond to the players' desires...

Not as I see it. Hussar has taken a further stance. In the situation you describe, he can signal to the player that he doesn't really want to play out the whole escape from prison element, and the DM is expected to cut scene forward to a point at which the player is no longer in prison with the assumption that the escape has now successfully occurred. Under that structure, challenge is only possible when the player agrees to it. There is this game that is supposed to pit the DM versus the player, only the player gets 'get out of jail/desert/intrigue free cards' that invalidate that contest.

Hussar stated upthread that he's not a simulationist GM (nor, by implication of that comment plus his later posts, is he a simulationist player). So why would you want or expect his game to satsify constraints that only make sense for simulationinst play? My guess is that Hussar is looking for a game run in something like the way that the Burning Wheel books talk about.

From what you've described, I don't find any real difference between how Burning Wheel is describing play and how I play out a game. And in any event, you don't notice some incoherence in first asserting "He seems to be advocating a form of gamism." and then stating to the contrary that "Hussar is looking for a game run in something like the way that the Burning Wheel books talk about." Aren't those two radically different things?

 

[N'raac]

Well, for one, the adventure was on a timeline. There was a pretty strong time pressure in this, so, getting back to things as fast as possible in game made sense. For another, we wanted to go kick the monster's butt. We wanted revenge. But, instead, we got to spend half a session talking to random NPC's who we had zero interest in talking to.

So, yeah, delaying the action deflated the scene entirely.

So what were the rest of the players doing? Was everyone at the table distracted and paying little or no attention to the interaction with these NPC spear carriers, or were other players engaged by the change of focus and role playing their interaction with these NPC’s with some interest?

It seems to me the DM is responding to the players’ desire to change the structure of the game. He could have said “no one in town is interested” or “you can’t find anyone more combatworthy than a Level 2 Peasant”. He could have rolled to see what calibre of assistance was available, and how many days it would take you to find and recruit them (days that, it appears, you didn't have)/ He didn’t. He allowed your alternative approach, and even facilitated it, bending the rules in your favour to enable you to find the resources you desired in the limited time you had available. He invested time and energy creating combat useful (or I assume so) NPC’s to enable the plan you envisioned to come to fruition, and making them more than cardboard cut-outs, investing them with personalities. It seems to me he enhanced the interest and engagement opportunities for your plan. And, apparently, doing so is "screwing over the players".

What it seems he did not do was say “Glory Be to Hussar and Praise His Brilliant Planning – you hire NPC spearcarriers, return to the battle and emerge triumphant. Let me heap gold, magic and experience points at your feet.” Would it have been OK for the GM to simply state that your new recruits turned the tide and the Grell is slain, rather than "wasting time" playing out the same basic tactical situation?

Now, if you had decided that the grell moved on? Yeah, total bait and switch as far as I'm concerned. We met a challenge, failed the challenge, came back to try the challenge again, but the challenge is gone? After I've spent an hour pissing about with random NPC's that I didn't want to talk to in the first place?

I don’t know the status of the Grell. Did it handily clean the PC’s clocks, then chuckle as they fled (rather than give chase, or hunt them as they returned to town)? If so, fleeing seems odd. But then, why not follow this easy prey back to its own lair? Or was it wounded and endangered? In that case, why would it not slink off to a hiding place to lick its wounds and, perhaps, plot its own revenge? It probably doesn’t heal entirely in the few hours you spent recruiting spearcarriers, so why would it sit and wait for you?

Let's put the shoe on the other foot. The GM and the players want to get the game rolling, so it begins with "You have been hired by the local Duke to seek out the foul beast which has been preying on the local livestock. His promises of 100 pieces of gold for its destruction have enticed you, and you are now patrolling the local area looking for signs of the beast."

So, we've cropped out playing the backstory. Except one player wants to play out the interaction which lead to the PC's recruitment, another wants to haggle over the price and a third wants to question the locals about the events leading up to their being hired. So, do we make the "get to the combat" guys happy, or play out the backstory? It seems like your goal is "let's handwave what I don't feel like spending time on and play out what I want."

Yeah, not my kind of game. My response would be to ask you how you would like me to resolve challenges and we'll do that instead. Stop wasting my time. Why did we spend significant amounts of time on a plan that you knew, before we started, had zero chance of success (since the monster had moved on)? I would be very disappointed at that point. What a complete and utter waste of time.

Only if the game ends there. “the Grell has fled, so the heroes and their spearcarriers returned to the village to celebrate and there was much rejoicing. Then they parted company and the spearcarriers were never seen again.” Seems pretty anticlimatic to me. But then, so does just dismissing the faceless nobodies after the Grell is defeated. No “brothers in arms” friendships? No thought of continuing to work together to accomplish great deeds we cannot accomplish alone (the same reasons, I expect, that the PC’s work together – why do they have an “important enough to interact with” halo surrounding them)? Just “thanks for the assist – now get lost!

If the Grell is so important that your characters are now emotionally invested, and it has left, we now have the opportunity for some role playing. Do we continue our very time-sensitive quest, now that the Grell no longer blocks our path and we have these new allies to aid us in its achievement? Do we abandon (or delay) that quest in favour of seeking vengeance for our fallen brother, and drive the Grell to ground? Or do we continue the quest, then seek out the vile Grell?

@Celebrim : I believe Hussar is speaking from the position of the players having gotten their butts beat by the Grell, thus their immediate goal is to get revenge and kill it. If it disappears/moves on/whatevers during their efforts to get resources to defeat it and they can't find it, the DM has robbed the players of the satisfaction of taking it down. That and he's wasted their time and even his own in a way. You can simulate the reality of a situation all you want, but a player expecting to get vengeance is usually going to be angered or at least indignant not to get it. And so the situation begs a question: Which is more important: The players, or the simulation?

If the Grell were not challenging in combat, would the players be so invested in its defeat? Adding a further challenge of hunting it down, rather than having it sit in its lair waiting to play out the exact same encounter again (and how many more times, should this battle also go poorly) seems to make the challenge greater, and the satisfaction of resolving it successfully greater.

Which part of revenge didn't you understand? Plus, we actually did need to get past that grell which commanded a choke point in the dungeon.


Well, besides repeating revenge a few more times, the fact that it was controlling a choke point and we needed to get past it (I believe I mentioned that a few times already) what more do you want?

And if it departs, the need to get past that grell has been satisfied. Now the characters face a further challenge – which is of greater importance, the quest or revenge?

If the GM wants to screw over the players, that’s easy. Give the Grell some allies. Make it more powerful so the PC’s plus their newly recruited helpers once again are soundly defeated. Pretend like the challenge can be beaten, but don’t actually permit it to be defeated. THAT is screwing over the players. The grell assessing its options and not just sitting there to allow the same encounter to be played out repeatedly until the PC’s finally win would, for me (as a player or a GM), make for a very boring game.

Hrm, I'm in my nice lair. A bunch of squishy humans just delivered a pizza to me and ran away. Yup, time to run away too.

Wow, badwrongfun all over the place. If I don't play your game, I'm back to being a shallow, immature gamer who should stick to computer RPG's. Yeah. I think I prefer it when the DM isn't out to screw over the players every chance he has.

How is that worse than the badwrongfun of having the creatures in the game world react to actions of the PC’s, and not allowing the players (or a single player) to simply narrate the actions of the PC’s and NPC’s and their success or failure at each stage of the scenario?

 

[nijineko]

well. i will go ahead after all and throw in my 2 cents.

d&d is based on rule 0. the DM is in charge. the DM says what is right, the DM decides what happens, the DM is the entire universe other than the PCs, and a specific monster does not have to oblige the PCs in any way, unless it makes in-context sense for it to do so.

on the other hand, d&d is also based on rule 0a. it is a game, and everyone is supposed to be enjoying it. this implies a social contract with a consensus of some kind with regards to what the players and dm wants out of the game.

one point is that, unless the contract established in rule 0a overrides by mutual consent rule 0, the players have no say in any part of any d&d-based universe, except for what the player's own characters do and say. it's not a democracy, people. it's a monarchy. and the dm is king or queen.

that is RAW and RAI. though again, like any game - it's your game. if you want to change the rules, go ahead and do it. just be sure everyone agrees to it to avoid most future problems.



in reading through most of the previous discussion, i seem to detect a dissonance between what the character would think and do, versus what the player would think and do. here is what i mean: if i were playing a character seriously bent on finding and fighting that grell, then when i went back, and found it missing, i would search for tracks, look for clues, and if needed, hire a tracker. maybe i missed it, if so i apologize.

i wouldn't chose as a player (which is what appears to me to have happened based on reading what was written) to give up and gripe and whine and complain about it and go on and on about "how the game should be". again, if i am mistaken, i apologize - no insult intended, but if there was not such a contract clearly and specifically agreed to by all at or before the time the game first began, there is no ground to stand upon with such arguments.

were i in those shoes... (and assuming no contract overruling rule 0 is in place) instead i would show by my character's actions what i want to happen and how i want the game to go. no grell where i expect it? see above. if need be, find an npc spellcaster to cast locate object or find the path (to the grell's lair so i can lay in wait) or similar divination spell to get information to track down the grell. NPCs want to chat with me about other stuff? attempt to recruit them to hunt the grell. network with them to find people who can help me find the grell.

unless they had some serious issue that they present to me which would logically vie with and potentially overwhelm, or at least delay, my characters burning desire to hunt down the grell, i would persist in my course and ignore other events and plot hooks until such time as it would, as i said, logically catch my PCs attention more strongly than the grell hunt does.

as a dm, were i faced with such a divergence, i would take behind the scenes actions to fulfill not only the player's desires, but to move the plot along. suddenly the grell is no longer just some random monster encounter. it's involved with the plot somehow. i'll tie the two together so that the paths cross. follow the grell, they will find some information about what the NPCs were talking about. talk with the NPCs, they will learn of some clues to the whereabouts and/or activities of the grell.

no plot survives first (or second or third) contact with the PCs. if a dm can't be flexible enough to incorporate what interests the players into the game, i have my doubts about that DMs capability and experience. (and by extension, actually dealing with things in real life... now everyone starts somewhere, but this sort of thing is a must-learn, i feel safe in saying. learn it or get out of the chair. multiple attempts are permitted, so long as you are honestly trying to learn.) and by logical extension, if the player can't likewise be flexible enough to roll with, through, or around challenges... get out of the chair and go play another game. you have no business playing this one. again, exceptions for those who are honestly learning and trying.

the point of d&d is to face challenges and to win some, and lose some. maybe even die dramatically. that's why there are revivify and resurrection spells and powers, so that you can die dramatically, and then still keep playing. if you didn't like how something went down, talk to the dm out of game. express your feelings in a mature and logical fashion. see if the dm is willing to work in a way to track down and lay some serious smack on the grell.


i recall that i did what i was talking about with a minor villain earlier in one campaign of mine. the PCs took an unusual interest in nailing this guy down who had escaped from them two or three times. they finally nailed him and trapped him in a place they were sure he would not get free of. now, about three years later in real time, and a few months later in game time, he has shown himself again - and managed to steal back some items the players had taken from him which he displayed tauntingly to the players as he disappeared. they spent quite a bit of time seriously hunting him down, only to have him escape them yet again.

now he is going to be a major reoccurring villain, at least as long as he lasts. given the party in question, i have my doubts that i'll be able to keep him going for very long once they get within striking or ambushing distance of him. ^^ but hey, so long as they are invested, i'll make use of that to entertain them and bring them greater satisfaction in bringing him down in the end.

i also had a 'this sucks' moment when one of my favorite characters died because i made three serious, obvious, major blunders. i went down in a combat that i had to win. and i lost because i made three stupid mistakes that i would have face-palmed on seeing anyone else do. so, i took an week or so off. literally. i had to walk out of the game - i was so badly affected. i felt like crying. (which is kinda silly, really, but it shows just how emotionally vested i had become in that character and the outcome of that encounter.) in any case, once i'd worked through my emotions, i sat down with the dm and we calmly discussed my situation, and then ways and means. we worked out a plot-preserving but character-satisfactory solution that provided a way for my character to come back to life (with the usual level loss) and not only preserved the plot, but actually moved it along forward.

now, after it all, that is one of my favorite stories - screw ups included. and that campaign is still on-going.



i'm going to venture a line of thought here. i haven't worked out all the implications or ramifications of it, so please take that into account.

a player who gets to decide what happens in the plot is not a player, but a dm.

certain game styles which have been brought up in the recent discussion sound like have a group of DMs all playing together....

which in turn sounds like having a game session which consists of a group of micro-DMs all touting their pet dmpc with someone marginally responsible (ie: storyteller/gm/dm/referee/whatever) for providing suitable trappings for said collection of pet DMPCs to play in...

i guess that may be what some people want, but as for me, and i shall state this politely, as opposed to the first three descriptives that occurred to me: i feel a strong, very strong, adverse feeling to that style of play.

i do realize (intellectually) that it doesn't necessarily have to turn out that way. but... no thanks.

 

[Celebrim]

as a dm, were i faced with such a divergence, i would take behind the scenes actions to fulfill not only the player's desires, but to move the plot along. suddenly the grell is no longer just some random monster encounter. it's involved with the plot somehow.

I'd probably handle it similarly. If the Grell was now being treated by the players as being more important than the current storyline, then I'd probably take this as a sign the current storyline wasn't very fulfulling compared to this (heh heh heh) "Quest of the Holey Grell" they'd initiated and try to improvise a new story line surrounding this Grell and what he was doing in the dungeon, and his larger role in previously unexplored faction in the game world. Maybe the Grell was a member of a cult to Azertaxus, the God of the Black Void, and the players would be lead into a story line about Nihilist cultists trying to unmake the world via summoning creatures there were never meant to be from beyond the edge of creation. Maybe there was a whole invasion of Grells, and the one they encountered was merely a scout for the tentacled God Brain and the reason he fled was he was under orders not to draw attention to the incursion until after the portal being constructed in the Accursed Black Pyramid was completed. Then if the party flipped back to the first story line, I'd already have in place a story line option to follow up the first major story arc with if the players wanted to continue playing.

The point is that I'm willing to roll with just about anything that the players propose their PC's doing. I'm not easy to surprise and not many IC propositions just throw me off balance. I don't really have a reliance on any thing in particular happening. For example, the PC's are going to be in position to kill the campaigns major villain about 6-7 levels ahead of schedule. I don't think it likely that it will happen, but it certainly could happen (despite the major villain being about 10 CR higher than they are right now). If the PC's come up with some clever and aggressive action and get lucky or get NPC assistance, I'm not going to stop them from killing the villain. It won't ruin my campaign. I'm not going to be surprised for it. I have no less than three layers of contingency planning for that event. If it happens, then great. I love having clever players. It's much much harder for me to have contingency plans in place for player stupidity because I'm omnipotent, but if I confer plot protection on the PC's, then the players are right to feel let down because I'm 'just letting them win'. Players taking absolutely bone headed actions are really hard to recover from, and leave me agonizing what I should do and how I should run the scene. When players 'surprise' me by defeating problems easily, that's never a problem. There are always more things to do. When players surprise me by getting stuck on a problem, that's a game stopper and recovering from that gracefully is soooooo hard.

But a player attempting to break or take over the proposition-fortune-resolution cycle. I can't deal with that at all. Game over.

 

[Greenfield]

No. I didn't. Please stop lying about what I said. It's rude.

There is, in fact, only one dust which is based on a spell which allows a saving throw -- which would be the dust of disappearance we're talking about. So looking to the other dusts for precedence of how this issue is handled in D&D isn't particularly valuable.

So, yes you did. Please stop lying about what you said. It's rude. (Odd thought: Is there a legal way to criticize writing comprehension? )

Here is a link to the dusts listed in the SRD.

Dust of Appearance - Does not list a saving throw.
Dust of Disappearance - Does not list a saving throw.
Dust of Dryness - Fort DC 18
Dust of Illusion - Reflex DC 11
Dust of Tracelessness - Does not list a saving throw.

You are mind-numbingly wrong. But if you disagree, please feel free to cite the third dust from the DMG which lists a saving throw in its description. We'll wait, but I'm guessing you'll either slink off or simply throw around a few more insults in the hope that it'll distract from how mind-numbingly wrong you are.

That would be...

Dust of Sneezing and Choking: This fine dust appears to be dust of appearance. If cast into the air, it causes those within a 20- foot spread to fall into fits of sneezing and coughing. Those failing a DC 15 Fortitude save take 2d6 points of Constitution damage immediately. In addition, those failing a second DC 15 Fortitude save 1 minute later are dealt 1d6 points of Constitution damage. Those who succeed on either saving throw are nonetheless disabled by choking (treat as stunned) for 5d4 rounds.
Faint conjuration; CL 7th; Create Wondrous Item, poison; Price 2,400 gp.

... which has been named by myself and several others now, multiple times. How are you missing this?

No offense, but I'd take you a lot more seriously if you hadn't self-evidently ignored the rules for how magic items work in your attempt to figure out how magic items work. If nothing else, next time you feel compelled to ask a question like, "What is the saving throw for a magic item?" you might try typing it into Google. (It's the first search result.)

Actually, your intent to offend has been quite evident, and saying "no offense" on top of the personal insults you've thrown (and been warned about), as well as the false accusations of lying and slander is, as you would put it, "mind numbingly wrong".

What's become evident in this very long and long winded discussion (I'm as guilty as anyone else) is that you aren't reading a lot of the posts before you respond. To you this has become about you and me, instead of being about the rules.

So, as the Mods have suggested, let's both take a step back and cool off a bit. It's a game. We play for fun. If we get so involved in personal conflict that it stops being fun then we're

 

[MarkB]

The assumption here, unspoken at the table, is that the DM is going to pretend to try to win, but not really.

I've seen pretty much this statement advocated as the ideal way to DM, and whilst one might want to throw in a caveat or two, I think the concept can form the core of a very effective DMing style, one which will keep groups engaged, entertained and interested for years.

 

[Greenfield]

My own take on the "pretend to try" thing is to "wear two hats".

First I devise the "bad guy" for the adventure and/or each encounter. That's wearing the DM hat.

When planning an adventure/encounter, I plan the "Bad guy" activities from the bad guys' point of view (i.e. wearing the "bad guy" hat), and I do my best with what resources I have. I actively try to win, just as he would. I also allow for mistakes that the bad guy might make, since he isn't supposed to enjoy "Telepathy with DM" as a power.

When running the game I'm back to wearing the DM hat: The bad guy is adversarial, the DM can't be.

By keeping these roles separate, and carefully preparing each one at a separate time to maintain that separation, I (hopefully) end up with adventures and encounters that are both challenging and fair.

And no, "fair" doesn't mean that the PCs always win. Sometimes it's up to the players to do some planning, including exit strategies for when they find themselves in over their heads.

 

[JustinAlexander]

So, yes you did. Please stop lying about what you said. It's rude. (Odd thought: Is there a legal way to criticize writing comprehension? )

What you claimed I said: "You cited the Save for Dust of Disappearance as an established fact..."

What I actually said (and you just quoted me saying): "Dust of disappearance is based on a spell which allows a saving throw."

Regardless of whether or not you agree that dust of disappearance allows for a save, it is indisputably true that the spell it's based on (greater invisibility) allows for a save. Look at the spell description if you don't believe me.

That would be...Dust of Sneezing and Choking:

Which is not a wondrous item. It's a cursed item. The fact that we're talking specifically about wondrous items has been really, really clear in this entire discussion.

But if you want to include dust of sneezing and choking, it doesn't change the meaningful point: Dust of sneezing and choking isn't based on a spell at all. So there is still only one dust in the DMG which is based on a spell which allows for a saving throw. So, like I said, looking to the other dusts for precedence on how the DMG handles saving throws for items based on saving throws is a waste of time.

Meanwhile, the discussion has moved completely past this. I've offered a complete survey of the SRD's wondrous items which demonstrates that you and JackintheGreen are completely wrong about this.

Do you have any substantive response to this? Or are you just going to throw around a few more insults?

To you this has become about you and me, instead of being about the rules.

It's funny. You make this claim, but you're the one who can't stop talking about how much you really, really want to insult me while failing to make any arguments about the actual rules whatsoever.

Lemme know if you actually have any substantive arguments to back up your completely erroneous position. But until then, yeah, we're done here.