D&D General No Fixed Location -- dynamically rearranging items, monsters, and other game elements in the interests of storytelling

[Lanefan]

I would bet that said people would say that frustration of the sort you describe is just part of the game.

Ayup.

Personally, I don't find that to be compatible with the goals of play laid out in the game which, as I mentioned above, are everyone having fun and creating an exciting, memorable story as a result of play.

Everyone having fun all the time? Call me cynical, but that sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky from here.

That, and some frustration and delay can make a subsequent breakthrough all the more satisfying and absolutely memorable. Example: a party in which I was a player once got to a door in a dungeon that for whatever now-forgotten reason it was vital that we get through. The only way - the only way, and believe me we tried everything! - we could open this door was to solve the riddle written upon it. (think of the Fellowship at the door to Moria)

Two entire sessions, plus some mid-week discussions, went by and we couldn't solve this bloody riddle.

Finally, in the third session my PC (as in, me) tried what seemed like a too-simple answer and >poof< the door vanished to a roaring cheer around the table.

I don't remember anything else about that dungeon or even that campaign, but I do remember that damn door both for the frustration of getting through it and the breakthrough when we finally did.

Therefore...

To my mind, frustration on the part of the players is to be avoided ...

I disagree with this statement.

 

[Curmudjinn]

I wouldn't say it's an "Iron Fist grognard style." It's just recognizing that the rules and the dice serve the DM, not the other way around, and that there's no point in leaving outcomes to the dice you're not willing to accept. Fudging is just completely unnecessary if the DM understands these things.

And that is 100% your opinion and the opposite of my own. Feel free to keep replying to everyone that disagrees with your method and beat a dead horse, as you have done for 27 pages of this topic. This is a fundamental difference in how we approach things and what we expect from and get out of a D&D session.
Good day.

 

[iserith]

Everyone having fun all the time? Call me cynical, but that sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky from here.

Easily achievable in my experience. Especially with booze.

 

[iserith]

And that is 100% your opinion and the opposite of my own.

So do you believe that the DM serves the rules and dice and that there is a point to leaving outcomes to the dice that you're not willing to accept? I'd be really interested in hearing why you think that, if indeed you do.

 

[Curmudjinn]

Good analogy. And sometimes I've been that stubborn general who stuck to the plan even when the players were bored. The last time this happened was during my Storm King's Thunder campaign a few years ago. The players had just reached a door leading into a dungeon when we called the session for the night. The players thought they were going to venture into the dungeon at the start of the next session, but the book had other ideas. The door they were standing outside was shut, and they had no way to open it.

I knew my players weren't going to like this. But as an experiment, I decided to run the adventure as written anyway. I thought maybe, just maybe, my instincts were wrong, and I was actually doing my players a disservice by helping them out in some way. Well, that wasn't the case. I thought my players would be frustrated and bored, and they were. They spent the first twenty or thirty minutes of the game tossing around ideas that I knew wouldn't work. It wasn't fun for anyone. And that's when I decided to never doubt my instincts again and to always adjust an adventure on the fly if it needed it. Because being bored and frustrated is not fun.

I'm of the same mind on this. One of my players was starting off DMing with a module last year(Each friend at my table runs a campaign and we just rotate depending on schedules). We all pitched in to help him get parts of the module in order and had long discussions during the game of how to move forward from certain actions or how a DM handles certain situations. His biggest fear was what you described above, being at a place where the group was at a wall, per the module or through bad luck.
When we explained, using your example, that the door can just be open to begin with, it was like a weight was lifted off of his shoulders. He had started playing with a group originally that disallowed any modifications. They were a strict Pathfinder group. It was rules-lawyering and hammering of RAW at all times.
Needless to say, he became a fun DM and has remained with us ever since.

 

[Lanefan]

Easily achievable in my experience. Especially with booze.

True, though how much of the fun has anything to do with the game does at some point become an open question...

...says he, at whose games beer and silliness flow free in equal measure.

 

[lordabdul]

I wonder if people's head would explode if they realized that an adventure/module is occasionally written from the start explicitly with "dynamic" content: "the key will be in the second closet the PCs inspect in this room", "if they fail to get the information from the blacksmith, the GM can introduce a beggar outside his shop, who will have overheard what the guards said", etc.

 

[lordabdul]

I also wonder if the refusal of "moving" things also includes events. Typically for investigation-based scenarios (like in CoC, for example), the GM/scenario only prepares a bunch of NPCs, factions, and places (a restaurant, a secret cult room, etc.), but what they do after the initial scene is up to the GM. An NPC might choose to stay hidden, or come out and attack the NPCs, depending on how the game is going. The scenario is probably orginally vague about it, but even if the NPC's agenda was clearly outlined in the text, the GM might choose to make them do something new, like strike an alliance with another NPC (even though that wasn't listed as a possibility in the text), because that would be a correct response to what the players did.

 

[iserith]

I also wonder if the refusal of "moving" things also includes events. Typically for investigation-based scenarios (like in CoC, for example), the GM/scenario only prepares a bunch of NPCs, factions, and places (a restaurant, a secret cult room, etc.), but what they do after the initial scene is up to the GM. An NPC might choose to stay hidden, or come out and attack the NPCs, depending on how the game is going. The scenario is probably orginally vague about it, but even if the NPC's agenda was clearly outlined in the text, the GM might choose to make them do something new, like strike an alliance with another NPC (even though that wasn't listed as a possibility in the text), because that would be a correct response to what the players did.

I guess what I said upthread bears repeating:

"It's probably important to differentiate the improvisation that all DMs must do to simply run the game versus the sort of improvisation that is being discussed in this thread where in the DM is moving stuff around behind the scenes to keep the PCs on the plot or, as some say they do, correct for flawed design or bad DM calls."

 

[lordabdul]

I guess what I said upthread bears repeating:

Yes, and that’s what I mean here: the GM is moving stuff around behind the scenes, making NPCs act in ways that aren’t necessarily mentioned in the adventure text.