D&D 5E Boy, that escalated quickly...

[I'm A Banana]

Today's session was a perfect example of why things escalate.

We spent two hours of session time, and several days of game time attempting to come up with a plan to infiltrate a fortified home. Ten feet into the grounds of said home and we fail a single skill check and alert the entire home. There was no chance of a failure resulting in anything else. Despite it being very late at night, there were what, over a dozen guards on active patrol? In a manor in the middle of a city that had seen no fighting in weeks? It didn't matter which skill check we failed, it was inevitable that we would fail and the first failure escalates the entire encounter.

Why did we bother pissing about for two hours? Total and complete waste of table time. We should have just marched right up, kicked in the front door and started killing everything. Same results without two hours of wasted time.

This is why scenarios keep escalating like this. If you don't want the scenarios to escalate, you need to provide scenarios with reasonable, and reasonably obvious, means of preventing that escalation. Otherwise, we'll get the exact same result every single time.

So, this was in another DM's game, but I was a player with Hussar, here, and my experience is different.

A heavily-guarded manor house on the look for some criminals should probably be a hard thing to sneak into, and our failure to fully scout out before we snuck in was an impatience on our part. We could've tried a number of different approaches. When we tried to sneak in, the DM gave us a chance to notice a patrol before the alarm was sounded, but we failed. Had we succeeded, things would've gone differently. Had we spent more time watching the house, things would've gone differently. Had we, I dunno, used Deception to get the guards away from the house, things would've gone differently. Lots of ways it could've gone.

And as much as we triggered one encounter, I don't think we've triggered more than that. I don't think we've yet stirred up the hive.

So now I'm curious about why the play experience was so negative for one player, but, for me, it wasn't a big deal.

 

[TwoSix]

So now I'm curious about why the play experience was so negative for one player, but, for me, it wasn't a big deal.

Just from reading the two different perspectives, it seems like a difference in expectations in what that 2 hours of prep time should have granted the party, and to how useful you feel the 2 hours of prep time actually was. It seems Hussar feels like the time should have given much more of an expectation of success, while you feel it merely gave you a chance of success.

It also feels like Hussar seems to feel that a full frontal assault was feasible and survivable, and I'm not sure that tracks with your reading of the scene. I do admit that if the party planned for 2 hours to avoid a scenario that was a difficult but still winnable fight, I would feel pretty bummed that one of the first skill checks partially or fully nullified all of that planning.

Granted, my personal play style doesn't mesh with spending 2 hours to avoid fights, either.

 

[77IM]

A heavily-guarded manor house on the look for some criminals should probably be a hard thing to sneak into, and our failure to fully scout out before we snuck in was an impatience on our part. We could've tried a number of different approaches...

Wait, is this the infiltration that you spent 2 hours planning? What on Toril did the group spend all that time doing?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Wait, is this the infiltration that you spent 2 hours planning? What on Toril did the group spend all that time doing?

We mostly worked on getting access to the "rich folks" district in the first place. The party's in a hostile city. The knight character found us lodging. The dragon sorcerer, swashbuckler, and archer tried to spy on the gates (met a small group of enemies that dissuaded them). The wild sorcerer found some guard uniforms for a potential disguise. The paladin got us access via some noble connections to a party, and the dragon sorcerer was able to find us fast escape from town for afterwards. There was a montage of fancy dress. Buying a wagon. There was some RP stuff at the party itself.

It seemed pretty appropriate to me. Though I would've liked a bit more party focus, and maybe a bit more of a clear path to our goal, it didn't wreck the experience for me (this was a time for our Paladin's RP elements to shine, I was a supporting character in that).

It seems Hussar feels like the time should have given much more of an expectation of success, while you feel it merely gave you a chance of success.
...
I do admit that if the party planned for 2 hours to avoid a scenario that was a difficult but still winnable fight, I would feel pretty bummed that one of the first skill checks partially or fully nullified all of that planning.

I guess I consider the prep time part of the gameplay. There were fun RP moments during the run-up to the sneak-in. It was itself interesting. I didn't expect a payoff for it, it was paying for itself as it was happening. Plans don't always pan out, and I feel like it was fair when this didn't. The montages of us trying on fancy clothes won't necessarily give us success when we're sneaking in the back door.

 

[S'mon]

So now I'm curious about why the play experience was so negative
for one player, but, for me, it wasn't a big deal.

When that one player is Hussar... Going by the last 11.5 years or so of Hussar's posts
here, he has a pretty negative attitude to GMs. So I think it's just a personality difference.

 

[I'm A Banana]

When that one player is Hussar... Going by the last 11.5 years or so of Hussar's posts
here, he has a pretty negative attitude to GMs. So I think it's just a personality difference.

Let's not get personal - avoid ascribing to "attitude" what might be more usefully ascribed to specific things in the circumstance (goals, time investment, win/loss expectations, etc).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Now, now, play nice!

 

[Hussar]

Here's the thing though. We've had a similar scenario about five times in a row and failed every single time. Not one success. No matter what we do or how we prepare.

In this case the one failed skill check was a group perception check. In the dark. So two characters out of six pretty much automatically fail because they're effectively blind. Of the four left, they have about a 50:50 chance of success each.

IOW, after two hours of pixel bitching trying to avoid exactly what happens here, our chance of success was about one in four. Shock, we fail. Just like always.

I have no idea why we bother. Total waste of time.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Here's the thing though. We've had a similar scenario about five times in a row and failed every single time. Not one success. No matter what we do or how we prepare.

I don't know that I'd support that assertion. I mean, we made it into the Rich District without incident, for one.

In this case the one failed skill check was a group perception check. In the dark. So two characters out of six pretty much automatically fail because they're effectively blind. Of the four left, they have about a 50:50 chance of success each.

I dunno the DC, but I felt like we had a fair chance to see the patrol as a party. We could've spent time watching the whole grounds. We could've made a distraction. We could've tried to have a talk, or to take out one patrol at a time.

IOW, after two hours of pixel bitching trying to avoid exactly what happens here, our chance of success was about one in four. Shock, we fail. Just like always.

I have no idea why we bother. Total waste of time.

I wouldn't characterize the two hours of RP as "pixel bitching" (my understanding of pixel bitching in a tabletop game is that it's about poking everywhere for solutions/checking everywhere for traps, not playing dress-up and going to parties). I also didn't feel like it was a waste of time.

I wonder if it's a play goals thing. I totally feel like that session delivered on what I wanted from D&D when I sat down to play it. Did you feel otherwise?

 

[Hussar]

Now, I'll admit, this is probably a play style thing. I'm pretty goal oriented, so, the idea that "the play's the thing" isn't my highest priority. Yes, I enjoy playing, of course, but, playing for the sake of playing bores me to tears. If there's a goal, let's advance to that goal and time spent that doesn't really advance in that direction is something I don't particularly enjoy.

But, my point is this. We're now Oh for five. Five different scenarios, although similar, and every time the group has attempted to find means to "play smart" and advance through those scenarios without having to turn into murder hoboes and kill everything in our way. And every single time, good idea or bad, we've failed. We're 0 for 5. It doesn't matter what we do, what questions we ask, what plans we come up with. The scenarios are set up in such a way that it is impossible not to have them go pear shaped and turn into these mass combats.

We sneak into the ancestral home of one of the PC's after discovering a secret entrance into the basement. The map is set up in such a way that the first room we come into is filled with twenty guards, on alert who immediately attack. We spend days trying to discover a way into another manor house, and, at 2 o'clock in the morning, there's about fifteen fully alert guards on patrol. We sneak into a fortress only to discover, after we've snuck in, that the one person who could recognise us is in the next room AND there's been a second guy who's been scrying on us the whole time. We come to a hunting lodge, spend time searching the outside, looking for tracks, looking in windows, trying to get the lay of the land, wait a couple of hours to see who comes in and out, and apparently miss the two trolls and giant lizards waiting just outside and still have zero idea of the numbers of defenders inside the manor house. On and on.

It's extremely frustrating. There's zero point to any planning. It will always fail because we will never ask exactly the right questions to be able to make informed decisions and the scenarios are set up so that it's impossible to not trigger the entire scenario. We'd have to succeed every skill check every time. Good grief, in this last scenario, the final failed skill check was the THIRD one that was forced on us. Of course we failed. It was inevitable. Even had we gotten inside the house, it's pretty much guaranteed that we'd fail one check and as soon as that happened, poof, free for all.

So, [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION], this is why I'm so frustrated. FIVE times in a row. Regardless of what we try. Nothing we attempt ever succeeds. So, why bother? Why waste the time at the table? Load up on buffs, kick in the front door and get exactly the same results.

If you want us to actually plan and "play smart" then that play has to be rewarded. At least sometimes. Maybe, instead of fifteen fully alert guards on constant patrol, maybe there's four or five, grouped together having a smoke in the corner which allows a reasonable chance of success. Maybe the dudes that can recognise us aren't fifteen feet away from us as soon as we walk into the fortress. Maybe, just once in a while, some proposed plan works instead of being instantly shut down - "Hey, this is a rich district, they need road construction right, or some brick work done? Nope."

There has to be some reward for smart play if you want the players to actually play smart.