The Thread In Which We Rant

[jasper]

Dear Best Friend for Ever. Please don't play if you don't like the way I run.
Dear School Buddy, Please don't wreck game night because Sacrosanct did not allow you to copy his homework.
Dear Sweet Young Thing,.....nevermind.....

 

[BrokenTwin]

Oh god, that reminds me of the game where I asked the GM if we could play a group of capital G good people. I wanted to try playing a paladin, and was generally sick of stories where we were morally grey people doing morally grey things. I wanted to play a hero doing heroic things for once! GM agreed, other players agreed, we all rolled up characters.
... And one player shows up with a shapeshifting drug dealer. Not a medicine man, explicitly a "dealing fantasy crack to addicts" type. Which the GM gave the go-ahead for. Another showed up with a merchant doing the 'reluctant adventurer' bit, which would have been fine if his sole drive wasn't amassing capital. I was less than impressed.

 

[Nagol]

Dear players,

Please, please, please follow any single adventure / plot line / situation to some form of natural conclusion. Please, stop making enemies and moving on to a new area in which you will make more enemies. Salting the earth behind you has a tendency to get ahead of anyone and there will be a time where easily defeatable singular enemies become unstoppable when grouped...

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Please, stop making enemies and moving on to a new area in which you will make more enemies. Salting the earth behind you has a tendency to get ahead of anyone and there will be a time where easily defeatable singular enemies become unstoppable when grouped...

Ooh, but that's what I call fun!

(And is basically how my current campaign has gone... they made a slew of enemies in Zobeck… then a big bad one in the skies above Morgau… then several new ones in Loshtadt… and there are about to be a few more added this weekend... )

 

[Sacrosanct]

Dear Best Friend for Ever. Please don't play if you don't like the way I run.
Dear School Buddy, Please don't wreck game night because Sacrosanct did not allow you to copy his homework.
Dear Sweet Young Thing,.....nevermind.....

I am a jerk that way. If I were a D&D alignment, I'd be lawful neutral.

 

[jasper]

I am a jerk that way. If I were a D&D alignment, I'd be lawful neutral.

Yea sure. You also give yourself 15 or above in every stat when I told you to stat yourself in 6E Modern.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Yea sure. You also give yourself 15 or above in every stat when I told you to stat yourself in 6E Modern.

Not since I was 13. I'm more self deprecating these days

And I'm closer to 50 than 40, so my DEX, STR, and CON are definitely not as high as they used to be lol. My whole body aches. All the time now

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

There is a theory among some of the oldbies that I play with that the problem lies with younger players whose primary experience is video games, where you can always restore to a save point if pushing the Big Red Button goes wrong, and hense the younger players need to be reminded that the game is played in Hardcore Mode.

To this I'd add Tim Kask's pet peeve about players these days vs. players in the old days:

Take these rumors:
-there are giant rats infesting Old Man Willers barn
-goblins are setting up camp in a nearby ruin
-bandits are raiding a nearby trade route
-a wyvern built a lair on Mt. Perilous

Well, in the old days players would investigate the rumors weakest-to-strongest, assuming that they'd gain experience and magic that would help them against the more powerful creatures later. So they'd go take on the rats, then the goblins, then the bandits, then the wyvern.

These days players tend to assume anything dropped in their way is going to be "balanced" so that they can defeat it - so they just skip all the weak encounters and go straight for the wyvern.

Which means, if Tim is (or I am) DMing, their faces get eaten and they're not terribly happy about that.

So I warn players when they join me, "I'm an old school DM, and you're 1st level. Not everyone you encounter will be a pushover. If you decide to go challenge a dragon or break into the imperial palace, you've brought it on yourself, and I will show little mercy. I will never put a challenge in front of you that you can't handle, but you're going to have to think in order to survive, and choose your battles wisely."

 

[BrokenTwin]

Well, in the old days players would investigate the rumors weakest-to-strongest, assuming that they'd gain experience and magic that would help them against the more powerful creatures later. So they'd go take on the rats, then the goblins, then the bandits, then the wyvern.

I've been slowly transitioning from an "all encounters must be perfectly balanced" GM to the above style, and the transition has been difficult on both sides of the table. I've found it helpful to just outright tell my players when they're chasing rumors that are obviously out of their league. If they still choose to pursue... then they'll either get crafty and surprise me, or they'll learn a valuable lesson about knowing when to cut and run.

 

[Reynard]

To this I'd add Tim Kask's pet peeve about players these days vs. players in the old days:

Take these rumors:
-there are giant rats infesting Old Man Willers barn
-goblins are setting up camp in a nearby ruin
-bandits are raiding a nearby trade route
-a wyvern built a lair on Mt. Perilous

Well, in the old days players would investigate the rumors weakest-to-strongest, assuming that they'd gain experience and magic that would help them against the more powerful creatures later. So they'd go take on the rats, then the goblins, then the bandits, then the wyvern.

These days players tend to assume anything dropped in their way is going to be "balanced" so that they can defeat it - so they just skip all the weak encounters and go straight for the wyvern.

Which means, if Tim is (or I am) DMing, their faces get eaten and they're not terribly happy about that.

So I warn players when they join me, "I'm an old school DM, and you're 1st level. Not everyone you encounter will be a pushover. If you decide to go challenge a dragon or break into the imperial palace, you've brought it on yourself, and I will show little mercy. I will never put a challenge in front of you that you can't handle, but you're going to have to think in order to survive, and choose your battles wisely."

I think one of the problems with this methodology is that some GMs are actually extremely bad at communicating the potential difficulty, but think they are good at it. Those same GMs usually refuse to "break immersion" only only describe things to you that the PC would see, but in the real world our sense of what is possible, or probable, or dangerous comes from a collection of experiences. It is impossible to replicate this on either side of the screen, so it is necessary for the GM to provide metagame cues (which in the fiction of thegame translate to those experiential feelings).

Too many GMs, especially old school D&D GMs, refuse to enagge in that metagame level and then blame the players for not being psychic.