D&D 5E (2014) Boy, that escalated quickly...

[TwoSix]

Personally, I think I'm going to join the murder-hobos and just kick in the door. A lot less work for a lot more fun.

Just for the record, I suggested that 2 days and 40 posts ago.

 

[Hussar]

I think it's more about the fact that this is five times in a row.

And fer gawds sake stop with the "trust your DM crap". That's not the issue. It's that the inevitable outcome of every scenario is mass combat.

I'm pretty much of the mind now that we should never really bother trying to be subtle. It's pretty obvious that that's not going to work. We should just kick in every door and kill everything. Would be a whole lot simpler and less frustrating.

 

[Hussar]

Oh and in the interests of accuracy. No we did not get any surprise round. The west patrol acted in the first round, pounding the gnome and moving into position.

 

[Raunalyn]

Well, like I said...maybe you should address it with your party instead of blaming the DM for the actions of the party.

 

[Hussar]

Well, like I said...maybe you should address it with your party instead of blaming the DM for the actions of the party.

And that's fair enough too. Sure, we made mistakes. Like I said, we have minutes to think about a scenario that you spent days or even weeks thinking about. And, we're trying to resolve things with limited information and a strong sense that it's unlikely we'll be able to gain more information.

But, again, at the end of the day, I'll point to the fact that I didn't start this thread. The thread was started by asking why these scenarios kept blowing up into these long, drawn out combats.

I really do think that part of it is that there is very little room for any mistakes. The first mistake we make leads to a long, drawn out battle with all the defenders.

I mean, take the other campaign where we're in the flying castle. Remove the PC's wizard creator and the NPC from the previous scenario, neither of which are required to actually be in this scenario. They aren't key figures. Either remove them entirely, or put them farther away, perhaps in the upper part of the castle.

Now, run the same scenario again. We no longer have the scenario completely blowing up on us. No one there can instantly recognize us and no one there is going to dump an ultimatum on the PC causing everything to go pear shaped. It might go pear shaped still. True. That can certainly happen. But, with the inclusion of those two NPC's, it was inevitable.

Or our current scenario. Maybe instead of a small army guarding this house, on full alert, maybe there's a couple of guards patrolling the grounds. A single guard we could deal with and still get inside. Fifteen guards is impossible to get around. Even with a distraction, I highly doubt we'd have made it any further. Not with that set up. There were just too many guards and no way to deal with them quietly. So, we tried speed instead of stealth and that failed. Stealth wasn't going to work either. Too many checks. It was pretty much inevitable that we would fail.

The scenarios you both have designed over the past several months (remember, this has been ongoing for several scenarios in a row) are pretty much designed from the get go to have mass combats. You called the fight in the house with the paladin's sister a Boss fight. Why? Why did we need a boss fight there? We showed zero indication in wanting a big fight, didn't really know that guy from a hole in the ground, and had gone to great lengths, including starting riots in the town, to NOT have a boss fight.

And, ten feet into the house, there's fifteen guards that spot us and now we're in the middle of a great big fight.

Why not design that so that if we do start those riots and have those distractions, there's three guards in the house with the sister? Getting to the sister was the point of the exercise, not playing murder hobos. Why did we bother starting riots and exploring under the sewers? We could have walked up to the front door, kicked it in and gotten pretty much exactly the same results.

My point is, if the group is spending significant time trying to avoid these mass combats, maybe, just maybe, you could step back and not have the mass combats happen? Oh for five right now. Five straight scenarios where no amount of effort on our part makes the slightest bit of difference.

Or, maybe, let's switch up the scenarios a bit. How about laying off the "assault the house" scenarios for a while? It's been five or six straight times now between the two of you.

 

[pemerton]

Both murder hobos split off from the party and opened a chest without the rest of the party being in the room, thus triggering the encounter. Conclusion: Party, not DM

Disturb a wizard's lair by triggering a trap and are the loyal creations of that wizard supposed to NOT go tell their master what's going on?

The GM is responsible for deciding what is in the chest, how whatever is in there might react if the chest is opened, and how the master might respond.

How would a noble who only cares about partying and the next wench on the list know what the garrison at the manor would look like? Did you bother to investigate and see if they knew you were coming? The guards you talked to at the party...they were bodyguards for nobles and probably only knew a little bit more than the nobles did.

The GM is responsible for deciding what a noble knows. And also for deciding that the noble only cares about partying and sex.

I don't see that it wasn't open to the GM to decide that the noble had information about the garrison at the manor, eg because one of the "wenches" is the sister (or has also "wenched" with, or whatever) the captain of the garrison, and had spoken about it to the noble.

The same thing could be said for the bodyguards. How big is this town? Does anyone have friends or relatives? Why did the GM decide that none of the bodyguards ever speaks to any of the manor guards? Or use to work as a manor guard but got a better-paying job as a noble's bodyguard? Or . . .?

What is being omitted here is that you were attempting to enter the district as road workers (your plan). The plan to enter the area was shut down for a few reasons. One; there wasn't any roadwork being done in the noble district at the time and two; I don't know about you, but road workers enter mansions all the time so that they can do roadwork...

The GM is ultimately responsible for determining backstory such as which roads do or don't need repairing, which manors are or are not expecting deliveries of bricks, etc.

If the players suggest such a plan, and the GM simply decides that it can't succeed (without allowing, say, a Knowledge (Urban Design) check by the players to establish that their PCs are familiar with the relevant paving and building schedules), that is on the GM, not the players.

You mentioned that you scouted the patrols...did you send someone ahead to scout the manor, checking for guards? No, you climbed one wall and looked. When someone in the party asked to see if they could time the guards' patrols, you only looked at one side of the manor and didn't send someone to see what was going on elsewhere.

I recall a specific portion of the session the other night where the party attempts to crawl over the wall the first time, succeed, and notice that there's a patrol there. They climb back down, and someone in the party asks if maybe they should create a distraction. Instead, the group tries to climb a different wall and gets spotted...

You guys spent time observing one side of the house...the west side. You were able to see a patrol roaming the grounds, staying in that general area. You saw another patrol to the north. You didn't send the scout (murder hobo 1) to the south to see who was there, nor to the east portion of the house to see what was there, either. That's what a scout should do, yes?

<snip>

The only reason that you think that whole plan had zero chance of success is because you and your party set yourselves up for failure, not me.

Ok, then why didn't you follow the suggestion of the Sorcerer and cause a distraction? Do you think the scenario would have played out differently?

The GM is responsible for all this backstory.

The players decided not to have their PCs create a distraction. Instead, they decided to try a different point of entry away from the guards they had spotted. It's the GM who is responsible for having decided that the PCs get spotted, rather than (say) the guards being distracted by the ones at the first point of attempted ingress calling out "Hey, come over here, I think I just saw someone trying to scale the wall!" Or whatever.

Getting to the manor did not alert the guards that you were coming...the several days you spent in the city digging up information did. That's why they had sketches of everyone in your group.

I was keeping a running tally of all of the successes and failures you guys made on your various skill checks throughout the night. They knew you were in town. They knew that it would be likely you would be coming. They prepared, too. Things in my game don't happen in a vacuum.

The GM is responsible for deciding what, if anything, happens in the background fiction. (Ie where the players have not declared actions for their PCs bearing upon that background fiction.)

In this case, there are any number of possibilities that seem consistent with the established fiction and sufficiently verisimilitudinous (certainly as verisimilitudinous as sketches circulating among guards). The first one that occurs to me is that a member of the resistance/rebellion/thieves' guild/veiled alliance/whatever comes up to one of the PCs and cautions them that their identities are known in the city and that they are in danger of being discovered.

At this point, the issue of discovery has been put firmly on the table and the players can choose how to engage with it (if at all) as an element of play, rather than just having the GM decide it all behind the screen.

no one thought to disguise themselves, were roaming around the city, not bothering to hide their movements, not pulling their hoods up, not checking to see if anyone was following or watching...all while being in an enemy occupied city.

For the players: It looks like you need to put more effort into your plans. One little peek over a wall is not scouting out the defenses - you've set yourself up for failure like the DM said. If the DM prompts you by asking if you're going to disguise yourself, that is an indicator that perhaps disguising yourself is in your best interests

For my own part, I find that once the GM is playing both sides (eg in this case, playing the guards of the city and advising the players on the best strategy for avoiding them) then the game can become less satisfying. If, as a GM, I felt things unfolding a bit like this, but for whatever reason I didn't care to make it a focus of play via something like the approach in my previous paragraph, I'd just say outright to the players "I assume you guys are going about cloaked and hooded, etc, to avoid being spotted."

From one perspective it may seen logical for the PCs to suffer because the players didn't follow up on a topic the referee values, but from another it's an abuse of authority to punish the players for their choices and condition them to slavishly follow the referee's lines of interest.

Absolutely. The game is ultimately for the players to play.

What I'm seeing in the episodes of play that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is frustrated by is a recurrent pattern of the GM deciding on a piece of backstory which the players don't know, and for practical purposes probably can't learn, and then on the basis of that backstory extrapolating to failure on the part of the PCs. The wall-scaling episode is an exception here - with the right action declarations (which would probably fit [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s definition of "pixel-bitching") the players could have learned of the other guards. Even so, the GM is still the one who has responsibility for all this backstory. And clearly other options were available. The failure of the PCs' infiltration attempt is clearly on the GM.

A lot of the discussion in this thread about this issue seems to assume that all this background fiction can just be treated as some fixed thing - and then goes on to say that it's the players fault that things went wrong because they didn't acquire the relevant information. But the background fiction is not some fixed thing. It's authored by the GM. If the GM chooses to author it in such a way that the players' plans, as declared by them, are going to fail more-or-less regardless (eg the PCs have been discovered not as the result of some failed action declaration, but simply because that is the background fiction that the GM decided on), that is on the GM.

You're misunderstanding "Say Yes."

The principle isn't about simply standing there while someone else tells you what they do. It's about not denying input.

I'm pretty sure that by "saying yes" [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] means to refer to the GMing principle from Dogs in the Vineyard, Burning Wheel and some similar games: say yes, or roll the dice. That is, either action declaration succeeds, or - if the matter is a high stakes matter relevant to the goals and stakes of play - then a check is framed and the dice are rolled.

Hussar seems to be saying that, when the real goal of play is to talk to the sister (? I think this is the reason for sneaking into the manor), then forcing check after check to see if the PCs even make it to the sister, and having many of those checks fail apparently because of decisions made about backstory by the GM, over which the players had no real control, isn't the only way to GM the scenario. And perhaps not the best way.

 

[Raunalyn]

And that's fair enough too. Sure, we made mistakes. Like I said, we have minutes to think about a scenario that you spent days or even weeks thinking about. And, we're trying to resolve things with limited information and a strong sense that it's unlikely we'll be able to gain more information.

But, again, at the end of the day, I'll point to the fact that I didn't start this thread. The thread was started by asking why these scenarios kept blowing up into these long, drawn out combats.

I really do think that part of it is that there is very little room for any mistakes. The first mistake we make leads to a long, drawn out battle with all the defenders.

I mean, take the other campaign where we're in the flying castle. Remove the PC's wizard creator and the NPC from the previous scenario, neither of which are required to actually be in this scenario. They aren't key figures. Either remove them entirely, or put them farther away, perhaps in the upper part of the castle.

Now, run the same scenario again. We no longer have the scenario completely blowing up on us. No one there can instantly recognize us and no one there is going to dump an ultimatum on the PC causing everything to go pear shaped. It might go pear shaped still. True. That can certainly happen. But, with the inclusion of those two NPC's, it was inevitable.

Or our current scenario. Maybe instead of a small army guarding this house, on full alert, maybe there's a couple of guards patrolling the grounds. A single guard we could deal with and still get inside. Fifteen guards is impossible to get around. Even with a distraction, I highly doubt we'd have made it any further. Not with that set up. There were just too many guards and no way to deal with them quietly. So, we tried speed instead of stealth and that failed. Stealth wasn't going to work either. Too many checks. It was pretty much inevitable that we would fail.

Yes, Hussar...I'm out to get you. It's my fault for your poor decisions. I get it.

Or maybe, just maybe, I'm trying to take into account the actions of the rest of the party, too? It's interesting how we have not one, but two party members saying their experiences are different. Strange that...

Could it be that you are only focusing on your perceived failures and your "he's out to get me" mentality as opposed to thinking about the areas where you were successful? If there isn't a chance of failure, there isn't any dramatic tension. But, if that's how you want to play it, I'll change my play style...it's cool.

I'll let you know where all of the enemies are, and what's inside the manor when we play Monday. That way, you can avoid the entire encounter completely.

The scenarios you both have designed over the past several months (remember, this has been ongoing for several scenarios in a row) are pretty much designed from the get go to have mass combats. You called the fight in the house with the paladin's sister a Boss fight. Why? Why did we need a boss fight there? We showed zero indication in wanting a big fight, didn't really know that guy from a hole in the ground, and had gone to great lengths, including starting riots in the town, to NOT have a boss fight.

You mean, other than letting you know that the boss was in there and that he had the knight's sister? Umm...ok. Whatever, dude...

 

[I'm A Banana]

And fer gawds sake stop with the "trust your DM crap". That's not the issue. It's that the inevitable outcome of every scenario is mass combat.

See, that's the thing - if you think that the inevitable outcome of every scenario is mass combat, you don't trust the DM. You're already convinced that every scenario is going to end in mass combat, so negativity bias kicks in and that's all you ever see.

No amount of careful DMing is going to diffuse that.

 

[billd91]

A lot of the discussion in this thread about this issue seems to assume that all this background fiction can just be treated as some fixed thing - and then goes on to say that it's the players fault that things went wrong because they didn't acquire the relevant information. But the background fiction is not some fixed thing. It's authored by the GM. If the GM chooses to author it in such a way that the players' plans, as declared by them, are going to fail more-or-less regardless (eg the PCs have been discovered not as the result of some failed action declaration, but simply because that is the background fiction that the GM decided on), that is on the GM.

It is perfectly reasonable to treat the backstory as fixed. That's a valid style. And with 3 of the 4 participants who have been participating in the game being fine with it, that suggests it is Hussar's expectations that are out of step and most in need of adjustment to fit the group.

 

[Raunalyn]

See, that's the thing - if you think that the inevitable outcome of every scenario is mass combat, you don't trust the DM. You're already convinced that every scenario is going to end in mass combat, so negativity bias kicks in and that's all you ever see.

No amount of careful DMing is going to diffuse that.

Well, the way that it seems that he wants to diffuse it is to remove any chance of failure and give him all the information without having to do any work. I'm really not sure how fun that will be for the rest of the party, though...