You're doing what? Surprising the DM

[Jackinthegreen]

Hmm, that's not what I got from your posts (or Hussar's) - it seemed that you were saying they were bad as in forcing the players to suffer through some DM ego power trip. Oh well.

If it's characterized as a DM ego power trip, then it's definitely not something players should suffer through since the DM has become an unsufferable (insert expletive). However, if it's characterized as the DM genuinely thinking the players will enjoy something because he's basing it around his experiences with other players, then it might be worth trying out. Such distinctions can be a bit blurry.

About the best I can think of is Hussar and Pemerton don't like it when the DM can't make reasonable compromises, either due to becoming too attached to certain elements or something else.

 

[JamesonCourage]

As near as I can tell, the relevance must be clear and obvious to the players/characters, or it is not relevant. The fact that it may be relevant without their knowedge of how or why is not sufficient - it must be known by the players to be relevant.

And planned for in advance, I think? Unless it's a siege? I'm not sure, but I can't quite get why this is great universal advice, either.

That's the view I would expect from the PC's, and the initial approach I would expect the players to take. As a player, my approach when complications arise in the journey may well be loud complaints as a character, but as a player, I would expect that the relevance of this "sidetrack" will become clear in time. Or, even if its relevance is tangential at best, hat the side trek will enhance, not reduce, the fun at the table.

That's my view, too. I get that others may not like it, but I don't get why that makes for good universal advice for GMs. As always, play what you like

I'm hoping he means that the players need to have something to go on, but realizes that making everything explicitly known would mean there can't be some fun or interesting surprises. What level of reveal and buildup he likes is not fully known, and might not ever be because it's likely going to change.

Right. It's just hard to peg. What he wants needs to be "relevant to the PCs" or their goals, I think. But it should be planned for, not improvised, I think. Unless it's a siege (or like event?), because then it's relevant to the PCs. But the desert crossing isn't relevant, unless it is, but then it's contrived, but the siege isn't, even though they're both improvised complications to the goal. I just can't follow the exact line of logic so far.

As for pointing out how people are people, I'm hoping to steer everyone away from "he thinks differently, thus he's subhuman" or something. There's been enough heated language that I'm somewhat worried we all aren't treating each other as we should.

An admirable goal (can't XP). Thanks for that. I should probably tone it down, too. Want to keep it civil. I'm just truly lost on some of this stuff. As always, play what you like

 

[Abraxas]

If it's characterized as a DM ego power trip, then it's definitely not something players should suffer through since the DM has become an unsufferable (insert expletive). However, if it's characterized as the DM genuinely thinking the players will enjoy something because he's basing it around his experiences with other players, then it might be worth trying out. Such distinctions can be a bit blurry.

About the best I can think of is Hussar and Pemerton don't like it when the DM can't make reasonable compromises, either due to becoming too attached to certain elements or something else.

I don't think anyone is defending a DM that can't make reasonable compromises. It's a two way street, players have to be able (and willing) to make reasonable compromises also - and some of the comments in this thread sure come across like this is all on the DM.

 

[Hussar]

Quick question for @Hussar : How would you have reacted if the DM had asked for knowledge checks of the wasteland area and then determined you guys knew of something? Would any of it have been interesting to you right there, or would you have preferred getting the information before being dropped there by Plane Shift?

Swimming way upthread because I've been away for a few days.
[MENTION=6678119]Jackinthegreen[/MENTION] - it's not really a problem. Although, in our groups, knowledge checks tend to be initiated by the players, not by the DM. IOW, if I wanted to know something about the desert, I'd ask for a knowledge check.

And, if the DM revealed something that caught our interests and we ran with it? Fine. No harm, no foul. It was never really the desert trek that was the issue in the first place. It was the (in my view) unnecessary tedium of a bunch of skill checks and needless simulation making saddles and falling off the centipede that I objected to. If the skill checks are so easy that we pass by taking 10, then they don't need to be rolled. If the skill checks are too difficult, then the plan becomes untenable.

Falling off the centipede every 50 feet isn't exactly the coolness factor I was hoping for.

 

[Hussar]

If there is some time pressure involved in the desired activity in the city, then any delay in the desert also places the PC goals at risk, does it not? That makes a “desert distraction” equally relevant if we accept that reasoning. “Dealing with these nomads will slow us down, so just Fireball them out of the way!” “But they are just trying to survive in this desert – what gives us the right to slaughter them for our own convenience? We should negotiate safe passage past their oasis.”

But, we would have no idea that there was any time pressure of the siege because we haven't been to the city yet. So, until such time as we go to the city, there can be no time pressure for the players. I suppose the nomads could tell us, but, that pre-supposes that we have any real reason for talking to random NPC's who happen to be met between A and B.

There is still no incentive for the players to interact with the nomads until after the fact.

 

[Hussar]

Do you have any posters on this board? Just curious...


You seem to be saying others are bad GMs because they play differently from you.

And this is different from the several posters who've said considerably worse than that about me how?

Would be nice if those who were so concerned about how Pemerton and I are characterizing arguments would show the same consideration about others too.

 

[Manbearcat]

My mistake. I kinda thought it was a continuation of your investigation in to how I saw your game differently than you did.

<snip> and any witch-hunt you percieve is more directed at Ron Edwards than you.

I'm not sure how you see my game. I'm not posting any of this as a biographical expose into my game. I'm no one special. Just an interested party in game theory on a board of fellow gamers. I'm just using it as a conduit for game theory investigation and whether "system matters" or "technique matters." That is what I'm interested in. Anyone can comment on that post, you or anyone else, and they can disagree as they see fit. Its just difficult when every time we try to establish any premise we can't even accept anything that appears to be fundamental to either party. So even a "jumping-off" point is obscured. I'll address the rest of your critique of those definitions in the coming days as I'm able.

The only "issue" that I had was you attributing a "straw-man" logical fallacy to my commentary. There was no attribution of any argument that I made or worked against given to you. I just gave my own litmus test and threshold as a framework for folks to know where I come from on this...in the interest of clarity. Maybe some folks do believe that anything less than 100 % agency is tantamount to 0 % agency, and thus a "deal-breaker". I'm not sure. You? I have no idea where you come out on it and I see no where in there that I manufactured/attributed (or even appeared to) a position to you of which you did (or even did not) take and then disagreed with it. That is what I meant by "witch hunt", nothing more. I'll take the "my mistake" as a good faith apology though and we're square.

You are running together the ingame and the metagame.

The plane of Limbo in AD&D is a morphic world - it changes over time and in response to its inhabitants whims.

But what @Manbearcat is describing is not a morphic universe. It's a mechanical process for determining the content of the gameworld. It's no different from my description upthread of the session where, in response to player interest in a bit of parchment, I ad libbed in some secret writing (and oddly enough @Celebrim called that bog standard GMing rather than "morphic universe"); or from rolling the dice in Classic Traveller to see how big a newly-discovered planet is.

The game in question is 4e. The skill being tested, I'm pretty sure @Manbearcat can correct if he wants) is Nature. So geographic knowledge is already wrapped up into the check.

I agree with this 100 % (and my "Shrodinger post" below is related).

And the depiction of the skill being tested and the context is also correct; Nature. And the skill being tested when the "sinkhole complication was generated" was History. In a last ditch effort to find a means of egress, the player was trying to recall the geographical, historical record of the badlands they were in; including any secret trails down into the bottom of the gorge, any caves, sinkholes, springs or other natural formations. If he was successful, then I would have let him author their ultimate escape (and generate/establish physical content...a trail, a cave, what-have-you) as this would have been the final success in the Skill Challenge (as a BW Wise). As it turned out, it was their final failure!

When I get a chance to write out the entirety of the chase scene (hopefully in the next few days), I'll flesh this out fully.

I agree, nothing too controversial. It's definitely not universal, but plenty of players give clues to what they'd like (on their character sheet!), or outright say what they think would be a cool direction when speculating about events, etc., and plenty of GMs improvise based on those things. The pre-planning (insomuch as it is) is only a variant of that, I think.

And, I think pemerton asked for "a reason to fight goblins" and "someone you're loyal to", but I'm not 100%. As always, play what you like

Perhaps my "pre-planning" and coordination to that end is more than normal and likely a bit extraneous. Some folks are obsessive "world-builders". I guess I might be bit of an obsessive "PC content calibrator". Its probably because I've been burned on dissonance with respect to that too many times for my liking in my 25 years of GMing. I seem to be pretty obsessive about being "armed with information" whenever I engage on something so I guess that would fit the bill.

That's right on permerton's game. Thanks for the correction.


Some quick thoughts on the "morphic universe" or various "Shrodinger's < >" commentaries before I go to bed. I had a long post about this some time ago but I can't seem to locate it. There is a premise that underwrites the "Shrodinger's Gorge" commentary that I believe has some problems.

1 - In our everyday lives we have serial perception of time and spatial awareness. We catalog what we see and do, remember things as we are able, and account for it all (insofar as we are able) in future endeavors. There is no "imaginary space". It is reality.

2 - In works of fiction (in this case TTRPGing), characters (presumably) have a "true" (but not real) serial perception of time and spatial awareness. They (presumably) catalog what they see and do, remember things as they are able, and account for it all (insofar as they are able) in future endeavors. However. We, the players (including GM), are not possessed of their "reality." That is because they don't have a "reality." To whatever degree we instill it, they may have things such as "setting chronology, extremely low-resolution geography, cosmology, etc" and their own personal "backgrounds". But they are dispossessed of reality as we know it and experience it. They have our "(shared) imaginary space" as proxy for all of the extraordinarily vast swath of their "reality" that requires "in-filling." As such, this "in-filled" content is generated, established and given credibility through a different means than serial perception, spatial awareness and sensory accounting. We breathe life into this content the moment we generate it, establish it, interact with it and thus give it credibility within the "shared imaginary space", no sooner.

3 - This gets us to the "Shrodinger's < >" question. Does this content exist in a state of quantum superposition (both "there" and "not there") and then collapse into one reality (in this case "there") the moment we (player or GM) establish it in the "shared imaginary space"? Is it latent and unrealized in the same way that Shrodinger's famous thought experiment ponders? I would say no, at least not in the "Shrodinger way"; an inquiry into the seeming paradoxical quantum world of "reality", of which we are only "perceiving", not "generating" content. In our games, we (the players) are generating emergent content during play. Again, that content generation (hopefully coherent) is the "higher resolution", "in-filled" proxy for our characters' superficial existence due to their lack of a granular world, and the serial perception of time and spatial awareness they would have if their world or they truly existed.


Just thoughts there. I'll try to post a full writeup of the WTF SHRODINGER'S GORGE? scene sometime in the coming days.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

A couple of things, here. First, players don't always get their way. It's part of what makes the game fun. Last night -for the first time this campaign- a PC died. He didn't want to, but he accepted it, as did the player. He went out in an awesome way, but he thought it would be cool to live. However, he also saw how cool it was for his character to die there, and rolled with it. It opens up new possibilities. It changes the landscape of the entire campaign. It's interesting, even if it's not what he wanted. It's like "fail forward" in games; you get closer to your goal, but complications happen along the way. Complications that are hopefully interesting. To my group, they are. So I use them.

What makes you think that I would not accept failure? Is there anything I've written to give that impression? Failure is fun. I have zero problem with failure. I would likely have problem with failure during a completely irrelevant scene where I have zero buy-in. But, that's not because of the failure, that's because that scene is boring.

Secondly, I want to answer your "why are you forcing me into play that I don't want?" question. Basically, it's a very simple answer: because I'm running the game, and this is the way I run it. And, I run it that way because it's fun for me, and my friends seem to have a lot of fun with it.

Will I force you to play it if you're at my table? Yes, I will. Will I force you to stay at my table? No, I won't. Will I force you to play at my way at your table? No, of course not. I've already said that there's no problem with you playing your way, and I couldn't even if I wanted to.

So, basically, players at your table are obligated to accept any and all complications you generate as the DM and, if they don't like it, leave. Again, that's a perfectly fair way to run the game. At least you're honest and upfront enough about that to admit it. Thanks for that. Others in this thread have tried to put it back on me for not wanting to play that way and have tried to weasel out of these claims.

Take ownership of your game. Well done you sir.

No, they won't. And it's fairly unbelievable to me that you're telling me that every group that uses complications in their games will eventually end up with everything screwing over their PCs. But you are. So, I don't think we can go anywhere from here. You're so obviously wrong (as far as my table is concerned) that it's not even something I can put effort into debating. It might end up that way at your table, but not mine, and I'm guessing not pemerton's or Celebrim's or at a host of other tables.

This is extremely different from what you just told me. This is the old "trap in the dungeon" problem. That, as long as their are traps in the game, you need to treat every place as having traps, or you'll probably eventually get hit by one. Which is true. And yes, the same goes for hirelings that might betray you, or whatever.

However, it doesn't necessarily mean that there are no traps as long as you check, and no traitors as long as your talk to people, and the opposite as soon as you stop. Which still isn't what you said in your last small paragraph, but is what you might be implying now. And again, it's not true, from my experience. I've heard stories of that from tables before (only online), and I believe them, but this is not a universal problem.

And that's not what I meant. What I meant was, if a non-zero percentage of situations will have complications, then the players are forced to treat every situation as having complications. If the players have no control over whether those complications are actually relevant to their goals, and are obligated to play out those complications because the DM will kick them out of the group if they don't, then I would say that they are pretty heavily forced.

To be fair, some complications are quite open. Like the scene where the party barbarian killed someone who had a wife that he didn't know about over a matter of pride. Very much in the open.

As for the group that needs to pixelbitch... why is every complication that arises devastating? I think I can see why it might be for your group. You seem very interesting in your party stuff, but not too much else. So, you value your lives, your gear, your plans, but it doesn't seem like you value other NPCs, cities, in-game philosophy, etc. (though you might, and I could be wrong). So, in your group, complications consist of hurting your party, your lives, your wealth, your gear, or your plans.

However, I get to use other complications that don't devastate the party very effectively. The man's wife, friendly NPCs being corrupted / threatened / killed, enemies maneuvering to worsen the social standing of the PCs, bad weather that affects the war effort (on both sides), and a host of other things. And none of it is necessarily devastating to the party. But it's a lot easier to use them, because my party is invested in so many other things.

And that's fair. I play a much more focused game.

Well, after this particular post of yours, I'm not surprised by this.

Depends. You don't want to, because it's not fun for you. It'd be bad for you. What if I found it fun? Would it be bad GMing then? If it is, am I doing "D&D" wrong? My fun is badwrong? That's why I don't like the "is this bad GMing" question.

But, you can also use the methods to resolve things that posters have said. Rolling things out works (have a standard "we take 10 to question them" thing going on for all potential problems). And, I doubt anybody who's mentioned a lame horse as a possibility has it being a common option, so it'd be a once/campaign deal, I'm guessing, and even then, you can have your "take 10" thing going.

But, I don't think anyone is suggesting that you screw your players over as much as you can as often as you can. And you seem to be saying that they are doing that, and are advocating it. Well, I vehemently disagree. That's just unreasonable, Hussar. It's ludicrous.

Then why is every single example in this thread countered with a laundry list of complications? Why has not a single person even simply accepted that you can hire hirelings without complications? N'raac has specifically stated that doing so would be boring, for one.

The "at best its a wash" thing clearly goes against what other posters in this thread have explicitly mentioned (making a friend in the guard captain if you turn him over, or something along those lines), and it does directly affect their goal of "kill the grell" by having one less guy. But okay.

Nothing wrong with this approach, but it's hardly universal. I'll get to an example, below.

Okay.

Okay, let's look at a random encounter in a very popular TV series: Game of Thrones. Tyrion is captured, and on his way to await trail for a murder. Along the road, they are attacked by some hill tribesman. This does a couple of things.

One, it gives Tyrion and Bronn a somewhat superficial but real bonding experience afterwards, which might directly lead to him offering to champion Tyrion later. And two, it shows that the hill tribes are dangerous, and in the area, which sets us up for when Tyrion and Bronn meet them on the road later, where they go on to play an important role for Tyrion.

As a player, I'd have no problem with this. You might; it's not directly related to your current goal. But, for me, this random encounter might lead to a very different campaign than one where I hadn't played through it. If Bronn never championed, Tyrion, how different would things be in the series?

So, that's why I like them. I get why you don't. You've said as much. But I'd only suggest skipping these scenes if they aren't fun for you, or if you don't want the results they can bring. I don't think it's a good idea to skip it as a general rule, because, well, that'd be a bad suggestion for my group. We find that kind of thing interesting.

Wait, you mention 50 pages of backstory on the desert at one point... I think we can reliably assume that something in there makes it relevant. But, not, now it's retroactive? And, it's okay to force players to interact with it if it's planned relevance, but not improvised relevance? Why does that make sense?

YMMV, and all. As always, play what you like

Yeah, the fact that you bring in Game of Thrones as an example of game play is pretty telling to be honest. You want a GoT style experience. To me, that would be a giant snoozefest and I am simply not interested. This is a style of game that does not interest me in any way, shape or form anymore.

Not that it's a bad thing. But, not my thing certainly. So, yeah, my advice to DM's would stand. You want to have a bonding experience between two PC's? Let them do it. Don't try to force it by tossing in some random bandits.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

Swimming way upthread because I've been away for a few days.

@Jackinthegreen - it's not really a problem. Although, in our groups, knowledge checks tend to be initiated by the players, not by the DM. IOW, if I wanted to know something about the desert, I'd ask for a knowledge check.

And, if the DM revealed something that caught our interests and we ran with it? Fine. No harm, no foul. It was never really the desert trek that was the issue in the first place. It was the (in my view) unnecessary tedium of a bunch of skill checks and needless simulation making saddles and falling off the centipede that I objected to. If the skill checks are so easy that we pass by taking 10, then they don't need to be rolled. If the skill checks are too difficult, then the plan becomes untenable.

Falling off the centipede every 50 feet isn't exactly the coolness factor I was hoping for.

In short, you wanted your checks to actually mean more than just "fell off the mount again." No arguments here.

I expect whether knowledge checks get rolled and how they're initiated greatly depends on the group. Were I DM and no one chimed in about checks when they got plopped into it, I'd certainly ask them "Do you guys want to make knowledge checks to see if you know something?" Chances are at least one player would smack their head and go "Duh, of course I do! How could I forget?" and then it'd become at least somewhat amusing. I hope over time they'd become more proactive about it and not require queues from the DM.

 

[Hussar]

That method means that he GM is forced to assess the priorities of the players. He must decide, or example, whether the PC's accurately assess the combat ability of the potential hirelings, and whether they determine hat one of them is unsavoury (perhaps a wanted criminal, perhaps just someone who won't have much loyalty to the PC's) and whether, having made those assessments, they would consider the combat ability of the unsavoury fellow to outweigh his less desirable attributes and hire him (1) or that his con's outweigh his pro's, so he his application is declined (2).

(1) and be accused of a Gotcha if something bad results from those unavoury attributes
(2) and be accused of a Gotcha if those inferior combat abilities result in th selected hires not getting the job done.

So the GM can avoid being dumped on by the players only if he delivers the precise best case scenario the players desire each and every time, or he makes the players assess the options for themselves.

/snip

Wow. A player expecting to get what he asks for when he's asking for something expressly allowed in the rules - in this case a handful of hirelings. What a bastard player. If getting what you expect is your version of a "best case scenario", I'd hate to see your worst.

The idea of Take 10 was brought up and it was mentioned that Take 10 gives you mediocre results. That's not true. Take 10 gives you successes. End of story. If a wall is DC 15 to climb and I have +5 to Climb, then I will not fall off when I climb that wall. I climb to the top without rolling anything. ((Note, I'm presupposing here that the DC is ACTUALLY 15 - please don't change that number))

If I have a +4, I cannot Take 10 at all.

Taking 10 is an excellent example of skipping things. I love the Take 10 rule. In any situation where my character is sufficiently skilled, I can simply assume success and move on.

But, if I apply that to hiring these mercenaries, I get people who are going to murder me in my sleep.