Can the GM cheat?

[billd91]

Not every GM can dispassionately sit back and say "Well, whatever happens happens". Many GMs(me included), end up often saying "Well, that didn't go the way I wanted it to at all...it wasn't very satisfying or fun."

If I spent a week coming up with cool puzzles because I want the players to try to solve them and I get satisfaction from seeing their process as they come up with the solutions to them....then any storyline that sees them bypassing all of the puzzles is one that makes me unhappy.

If this is a serious problem, then I would start to think that GMing is really not the role for you. A GM should really enjoy seeing the players succeed regardless of how they do it. If not, you may be too focused on your own 'precious encounters,' and by that, I mean you've put too much enjoyment or self-validation value on the specific encounters or puzzles you have created. GMing, given the way players run roughshod over any best laid plans, requires a bit more detachment. It's great when your encounters play out well, sure, but there's no guarantee of that and you have to let that go.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I used to agree about 4e...but as time goes on, 4e is suffering from the same problem(though to a lesser degree). I can't run 4e anymore without getting just as frustrated. My last game of 4e went something like this:

Player 1: "I charge, when I charge I turn invisible giving me combat advantage. I get +1 from charging, +3 for having combat advantage with a light blade, and with the rest of my bonuses that gives me a +29 to hit. I do 75 damage."

Me: "Well, the enemy has a 27 AC...so I guess you hit on a -2. He has 98 hitpoints so that bloodies him in one attack...which is way too powerful. He attacks back. I roll a 15...with a bonus of +18, that makes 33. But since you are invisible, he gets -5. That's 28. You have an AC of 34...I guess that misses...even if you weren't invisible...and I rolled well. *sigh*"

Player 2: "My turn! I hit AC of 23! That misses I suppose"

Player 3: " I hit AC 26! I guess that misses too."

Player 4: "I hit AC 28. I hit. I do 23 damage."

Me: "So, let me get this straight....75% of your damage comes from a single PCs...this seems kind of dumb."

Each book that came out added more and more corner cases where the rules had weird interactions. Now I have one player who threatened to stop playing if he wasn't allowed to be a Hybrid or multiclass character because he felt that single class characters just weren't powerful enough.

Is this an actual example from play, or just something you made up? I can't remember the numbers being that different. Around a +5 difference between worst and best character is what I see in play. That's assuming people are doing very mild optimizing (starting with an 18 in their main stat).

 

[ExploderWizard]

3) OMG! Opportunity attacks are MAGIC!

Opportunity attacks are exactly like mark attacks, they're an extra attack gained due to your opponent provoking it by improperly defending themself.

I have come to the conclusion that in an abstract combat system such as D&D, opportunity attacks are needless minutae. Especially in situations where MAKING an opportunity attack per the rules would logically put the attacker in an even worse situation but it doesn't because the rules conveniently don't cover it. Sure I might be fighting 3 monsters at once in front of me, but hey, that guy behind me moved an extra step and he's gonna pay for it. "Excuse me front monsters, do be a dear and give me a moment to chastise your fellow back there"..... WHACK!....." Jolly good, now where were we?"

The whole business of making the attack on someone improperly defending themselves, often leads to the atacker having to do the same. This logically leads to a seesaw circle jerk of opportunity attacks until someone dies.

The whole mess would work better if OA's were only available to those who actually had opportunity (not already engaged in melee).

It depends what you are going for. Most stories are designed to invoke emotion of some sort. As a DM, you are still a story teller. You create the situations your players encounter. Your decision to make the shopkeeper meek and shy vs overbearing and domineering invokes a very different story, very different reactions, and very different emotions.

Just like whether the players are powergamed or not can affect their reactions to situations just as much. Take the following situation:

The villagers come up to the PCs and beg them to free them from the tyrant wizard who lives in the tower on the hill.

Non powergamed characters may realize that they don't have the ability to defeat the wizard in combat so they start a rebellion and recruit an army to try to defeat the wizard. This process might take days or years to accomplish. They come up with a plan to lure the wizard out of the tower and face their army.

Slightly powergamed characters may realize that they don't need an army to defeat the wizard, they can do it themselves. So they go to the tower and fight their way through the traps and puzzles the wizard has set up over a couple of weeks of play before finally defeating the wizard in a difficult combat where they nearly die.

More powergamed character might just teleport directly to the wizard and skip his traps and puzzles before killing the wizard in the first round of combat before he gets an action.

Even more powergamed characters might simply disintegrate the entire tower and the wizard inside of it without getting close.

Each of those stories might be more or less satisfying for the players and the DM involved. And you want the DM to enjoy the game that is being played. A DM who becomes dissatisfied with the story his game is generating might simply decide to stop running the game because it doesn't bring him the joy he wanted.

Not every GM can dispassionately sit back and say "Well, whatever happens happens". Many GMs(me included), end up often saying "Well, that didn't go the way I wanted it to at all...it wasn't very satisfying or fun."

If I spent a week coming up with cool puzzles because I want the players to try to solve them and I get satisfaction from seeing their process as they come up with the solutions to them....then any storyline that sees them bypassing all of the puzzles is one that makes me unhappy.

I have the most fun as a GM when the players are presented with options A, B, and C and instead they do Z. Finding out what happens next is what I find most satisfying about running campaigns. The GM is privy to much more information than the players so the joy of surprise and discovery is a precious commodity that is squandered away if the players never do anything more than jump through the hoops as presented.

Epic stories are great, and every setting needs some. Its better IMHO to simply present them to the players as background and attempt to get thier characters to exceed or top them instead of following along in the creation of one already envisioned.

What you just described is classic railroading. Theres a problem and rather then allowing the players to solve it however they deem best the only allowed course of action is on that the DM will find "satisfying". Thats not a good thing.

QFT.

If this is a serious problem, then I would start to think that GMing is really not the role for you. A GM should really enjoy seeing the players succeed regardless of how they do it. If not, you may be too focused on your own 'precious encounters,' and by that, I mean you've put too much enjoyment or self-validation value on the specific encounters or puzzles you have created. GMing, given the way players run roughshod over any best laid plans, requires a bit more detachment. It's great when your encounters play out well, sure, but there's no guarantee of that and you have to let that go.

Also this.

 

[Mallus]

What you just described is classic railroading. Theres a problem and rather then allowing the players to solve it however they deem best the only allowed course of action is on that the DM will find "satisfying". Thats not a good thing.

But it's also a major part of classic TSR-era dungeon design -- "puzzle" rooms in which certain spells don't work, forcing the players to solve them without magic, or with a more limited selection of magic.

It's not railroading so much as setting up a particular sort of challenge. This is important in a game where select characters can have the solution to almost every imaginable kind of challenging obstacle readily at hand, ie in their spellbooks. Arguably, its more important in WotC-era D&D (well, in 3e), where the default assumption is the players have a much greater degree of control over the magical tools they're packing.

Speaking as someone who DMs more often than he plays (but played more during the TSR-era), I have a lot sympathy for DMs and their pet challenges. DMs have to provide a steady stream of challenging situations. Frequently they crib them from books and films where the protagonists have a much more limited set of tools at their disposal. This can cause some friction.

Sure, it's great when PCs solve a problem quickly with just the right spell/mechanically-defined ability. But not all the time. That way lies the too-easy campaign. It's a balancing act. And sometimes those balancing measures can look like railroading from a certain angle.

 

[billd91]

I have come to the conclusion that in an abstract combat system such as D&D, opportunity attacks are needless minutae. Especially in situations where MAKING an opportunity attack per the rules would logically put the attacker in an even worse situation but it doesn't because the rules conveniently don't cover it. Sure I might be fighting 3 monsters at once in front of me, but hey, that guy behind me moved an extra step and he's gonna pay for it. "Excuse me front monsters, do be a dear and give me a moment to chastise your fellow back there"..... WHACK!....." Jolly good, now where were we?"

The whole business of making the attack on someone improperly defending themselves, often leads to the atacker having to do the same. This logically leads to a seesaw circle jerk of opportunity attacks until someone dies.

The whole mess would work better if OA's were only available to those who actually had opportunity (not already engaged in melee).

I dunno. I think the concept works better with a longer combat round abstraction than it does with a 6 second round because, I agree, it's a bit weird to see someone beset with many enemies spend the attention to hit (at full effectiveness) someone who moved funny within range and in such a short span of time. I'm just not entirely convinced any remedies to that, other than removing them entirely (which I'm also not keen on), would handle it well without being cumbersome. Maybe some kind of engagement capacity - exceed that and the character no longer can take AoO.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

What you just described is classic railroading. Theres a problem and rather then allowing the players to solve it however they deem best the only allowed course of action is on that the DM will find "satisfying". Thats not a good thing.

I disagree. Railroading is often a good thing. I disagree that it is necessarily railroading. To me, railroading is removing all choices but one. The PCs still have choices in my game, they are just constrained by the plot of the game. They have their choice how to solve the puzzles in the tower, they are allowed to use all their resources to solve them and interesting solutions I didn't think of will be accepted and allowed. However, they do not have the choice of simply skipping all of the puzzles. Because that ruins the game for me. If the game is ruined for me, I don't want to DM.

A DM should be able to powergame with the best of them, if you play with characters like that just optimize your bad guys some more.

I disagree this needs to be done. I don't have time to power game. I have to come up with ideas for a plot, NPCs, monsters, maps for battles, and a lot more. I simply don't have the time to also powergame. Either way, I'm fairly good at power gaming. But when I sit down at a table to run a game, I don't want to spent that time in prep. I want to grab a monster out of the monster manual that the book tells me is of an appropriate difficulty and I want that encounter to work with any PCs that the players have made.

I have video games to play, TV to watch, time to spend with my gf, work to do. I don't want to cut into any of that time in order to do prep on a D&D game. If powergaming becomes a requirement to DMing, then I'm out.

However, even given that, I can't powergame as well as my players. My mind just doesn't allow me to go there. I have the same problem with making Magic the Gathering Decks. If I come up with a card combo that will just destroy the other player...I immediately forget it and make up something more "fair" in my mind. I don't have fun destroying my opponent. When I make up D&D characters I normally stop at something powerful but "fair". My players show up at the table with combinations of feats and powers from 3 different classes that when combined together lock enemies down from moving or attacking for any entire combat(making battles against thousands of year old lichs go like this "He takes fire damage, he gets knocked prone, he gets back up again, he's dazed, that's his action...go"). They come up with ideas that do 60 damage to every enemy on the board as a minor action(it's a really stupid combo by the way, and I eventually ruled against that one)

And the most "satisfying" solution to the players will be the one they were able to decide upon themselves, control themselves, and use the abilities that they thought would be fun in character creation in the resolution of.

That's debatable as well. More than once I've had a player come up with an idea that I allowed to work that simply destroyed an enemy without really fighting it. The players felt cheated. They expected the action to fail and then get into a fight because they wanted to use their cool combat abilities that they'd been itching to use for a while. Instead, someone came up with an idea to outright win without a battle and the rest of the players WANTED me to say no or find some reason it didn't work because they wanted to fight.

Sometimes the easiest or most obvious solution isn't the one the players actually want to do. Take my example above about the wizard's tower. Some players may enjoy solving puzzles. So if one PC says "Here, I've got the ability to destroy the whole tower with one spell...The wizard will die. I cast it." When I say "Sorry, the tower resists your magic as it has some sort of ward that protects it", then one player might be a little frustrated that his spell didn't work, but another might be happy because he wasn't cheated out of the experience of exploring the tower.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

If this is a serious problem, then I would start to think that GMing is really not the role for you. A GM should really enjoy seeing the players succeed regardless of how they do it. If not, you may be too focused on your own 'precious encounters,' and by that, I mean you've put too much enjoyment or self-validation value on the specific encounters or puzzles you have created. GMing, given the way players run roughshod over any best laid plans, requires a bit more detachment. It's great when your encounters play out well, sure, but there's no guarantee of that and you have to let that go.

Actually, I'm the DM...I don't have to let anything go. That's the great thing about being the DM. You control EVERYTHING in the universe. Do I leave thing broad enough to allow the PCs to come up with any number of 20 or 30 solutions to the problem? Sure. Do I allow infinite solutions? Unlikely. If it seems completely unfair, or I feel would spoil the experience of playing, then I find a way not to allow it.

Basically I weigh "I don't have anything planned after this tower of traps and tricks. I anticipated that it'd take about 3 sessions for the players to get through it, so I didn't think I'd need to plan beyond that. I'm really bad at improvising. I spent 3 hours mapping this tower and its traps. If I allow them to destroy the tower, I'd either have to end the session immediately so I had time to come up with something else...or I have to just start making up plot on the fly. Which always turns out poorly and with the players complaining that my game is boring. So, it's either say no to blowing up the tower and giving them a little bit of disappointment in exchange for them likely having fun solving my puzzles for the next 3 sessions....or it's end the game here and telling them to go home early since we won't be playing tonight."

A couple of times when I REALLY didn't want to tell the players no, I actually posed the question to them outside of the game "Here's the situation, do you want me to allow this in exchange for not gaming today?" they've never said anything but "Oh...nevermind then, I don't even try that."

I also disagree that my entire job is to make the players happy. I believe my happiness should be equal to theirs. My job is to create a game that makes both them AND me happy. If it requires sacrificing my own happiness for theirs, I don't want to DM. None of them want to DM either. We've discussed it many times. If I step down as the DM, we stop playing D&D. Everyone would much rather play the game with some restrictions to make the game more fun for me than not play at all.

 

[timASW]

I have come to the conclusion that in an abstract combat system such as D&D, opportunity attacks are needless minutae. Especially in situations where MAKING an opportunity attack per the rules would logically put the attacker in an even worse situation but it doesn't because the rules conveniently don't cover it. Sure I might be fighting 3 monsters at once in front of me, but hey, that guy behind me moved an extra step and he's gonna pay for it. "Excuse me front monsters, do be a dear and give me a moment to chastise your fellow back there"..... WHACK!....." Jolly good, now where were we?"

The whole business of making the attack on someone improperly defending themselves, often leads to the atacker having to do the same. This logically leads to a seesaw circle jerk of opportunity attacks until someone dies.

The whole mess would work better if OA's were only available to those who actually had opportunity (not already engaged in melee).



I have the most fun as a GM when the players are presented with options A, B, and C and instead they do Z. Finding out what happens next is what I find most satisfying about running campaigns. The GM is privy to much more information than the players so the joy of surprise and discovery is a precious commodity that is squandered away if the players never do anything more than jump through the hoops as presented.

Epic stories are great, and every setting needs some. Its better IMHO to simply present them to the players as background and attempt to get thier characters to exceed or top them instead of following along in the creation of one already envisioned.
.

Rather then going piece by piece I'll just say I agree with this wholeheartedly.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Is this an actual example from play, or just something you made up? I can't remember the numbers being that different. Around a +5 difference between worst and best character is what I see in play. That's assuming people are doing very mild optimizing (starting with an 18 in their main stat).

Yes, it's an example for play. Though the numbers are likely slightly off since I'm working from about 1 year old memory.

However, I do remember the power gamed character needed a -2 to hit against enemies who were 3 levels above the level of the party. I told him that he must be cheating or reading the rules wrong because there was no way to get that bonus to hit. The game was balanced to not allow that. Then he spelled out his character for me. Which I don't remember ALL the details of now. However, it was legal. If a little...shifty.

Basically, he was a Pixie Hexblade whose hexblade weapon was a +3 proficiency weapon while doing 1d12 damage, while still being a Light Blade. So, he had the feat that gave +3 to hit with light blades with combat advantage. He had put a 20 in his prime stat, put a point into it at every level. Then he took some feat that gave him a +1 to hit with...fire spells I want to say. All his powers were fire spells. He charged with every attack so he could get the +1 and combat advantage. He also had another plus one to hit, can't remember from what. This essentially gave him +6 to hit over the next most power gamed character in the group who had JUST maxed their stat and couldn't move to a position with combat advantage.

Then in my group there were at least 2 players who had absolutely no idea how to power game. They'd started with 16s in their prime stat. They still had +2 weapons while at 15th level...because they wanted cooler magic items than weapons. That gave them about +5 to hit less than the powergamed people in the group and about +11 less than the super power gamed character.

This meant when I increased the power of enemies so that the super power gamed character needed a 3 on average to hit, the weak characters needed 14s. It didn't help that they had poor luck. One of them once went an entire session without rolling over a 12. But it didn't matter that much since when they did hit, they did a 3rd of the pixie's damage.

 

[timASW]

But it's also a major part of classic TSR-era dungeon design -- "puzzle" rooms in which certain spells don't work, forcing the players to solve them without magic, or with a more limited selection of magic.

It's not railroading so much as setting up a particular sort of challenge. This is important in a game where select characters can have the solution to almost every imaginable kind of challenging obstacle readily at hand, ie in their spellbooks. Arguably, its more important in WotC-era D&D (well, in 3e), where the default assumption is the players have a much greater degree of control over the magical tools they're packing.

Speaking as someone who DMs more often than he plays (but played more during the TSR-era), I have a lot sympathy for DMs and their pet challenges. DMs have to provide a steady stream of challenging situations. Frequently they crib them from books and films where the protagonists have a much more limited set of tools at their disposal. This can cause some friction.

Sure, it's great when PCs solve a problem quickly with just the right spell/mechanically-defined ability. But not all the time. That way lies the too-easy campaign. It's a balancing act. And sometimes those balancing measures can look like railroading from a certain angle.

No its absolutely railroading and I couldnt give a fart in the wind for TSR era dungeon crawls.

Even if big dungeon crawls werent themselves boring and limiting (and they are) the ones from that era were particularly prone to horrible and often utterly logic breaking railroading. Especially the sort of random, nonsensical anti-magic fields you describe. They were just crutches for weak DM's to beat players over the head with in an age of adversarial gaming thats better left in that dim past.

I've DM'ed a lot more then ran over the years and I have absollutely no pity for DM's pet challenges. I learned a long time ago that my pet challenges were more ego stroke then fun for the group and stopped doing it. Ever since then my games have run smoother, been enjoyed more by everyone and my own creativity went up leaps and bounds since I stopped shackling players to whatever outcome I had already decided was right and started making myself actually deal with their freedom.

Theres a point when every would be GM has to decide if they want a game thats the most fun for the most people at the table or the most fun for them and hopefully the players like it too. This sort of railroady "challenge" is the latter sort of game.