D&D 5E 2 year campaign down the drain?

[pemerton]

There’s some context you may be overlooking (or perhaps concluding isn’t important). The situation was a party boat, loaded with civilians/normies, and a check-your-weapons-at-the-door kickoff. The overwhelming signal here was “this isn’t gonna be a fight scene. Ocean’s 11 this beeotch.” So the players aren’t blameless bulls in china shops here. They have agency and they arguably drew down way too early.

To me, this comes back to questions about the role of the players in the game. 5e D&D doesn't have a whole lot of mechanics for "Ocean's 11"-ing a situation beyond figuring out what the GM has in mind and then doing that.

Eg if a player declares I look in place X to find the widget that we need to do that other thing in place Z there is no canonical resolution framework beyond the GM looks at his/her notes to see what they say about place X. And if the players do succeed in having their PCs fing the widget, then unless the widget is a magic item or spell component there is no canonical way for working out whether deploying it at place Z to try and do that other thing wil work, beyond The GM consults his/her notes and/or makes a decision.

Given that, I think the responsibility falls heavily on the referee. There are many other things that can happen besides armed guards turning up.

I should add, I'm not faulting the GM in the OP here. There's nothing wrong with having the guards turn up! It's just that, when a GM makes that decision, it then seems to me pretty pointless to complain - in the context of a D&D game - that lethal combat was the outcome.

 

[Bawylie]

To me, this comes back to questions about the role of the players in the game. 5e D&D doesn't have a whole lot of mechanics for "Ocean's 11"-ing a situation beyond figuring out what the GM has in mind and then doing that.

Eg if a player declares I look in place X to find the widget that we need to do that other thing in place Z there is no canonical resolution framework beyond the GM looks at his/her notes to see what they say about place X. And if the players do succeed in having their PCs fing the widget, then unless the widget is a magic item or spell component there is no canonical way for working out whether deploying it at place Z to try and do that other thing wil work, beyond The GM consults his/her notes and/or makes a decision.

Given that, I think the responsibility falls heavily on the referee. There are many other things that can happen besides armed guards turning up.

I should add, I'm not faulting the GM in the OP here. There's nothing wrong with having the guards turn up! It's just that, when a GM makes that decision, it then seems to me pretty pointless to complain - in the context of a D&D game - that lethal combat was the outcome.

That’s a fair hit.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

But you're not really making a split decision.

In a table with 5 other people you've had several minutes to decide what to do. You know when your turn is and have been watching the action unfold around you while you wait, thinking about what you're going to do.

Unless the player is incredibly indecisive (in which case they get a 'long' six seconds) or has had their mind elsewhere like on their phone or something (they get no mercy).

Not totally true. When you are done your turn, 5(or in this case 7) other people play out their turns as well as all the enemies. You have lots of time to formulate a plan but each character that takes their turn, changes the shape of the battle. So when the character that goes just before you, mucks up your idea/plan, now say, "crap, I can't execute my action anymore because of x,y,z' what kind of spells do I have in my arsenal to deal with this?"

When this happens, some people are much better at dealing with it than others.

To me, this comes back to questions about the role of the players in the game. 5e D&D doesn't have a whole lot of mechanics for "Ocean's 11"-ing a situation beyond figuring out what the GM has in mind and then doing that.

Eg if a player declares I look in place X to find the widget that we need to do that other thing in place Z there is no canonical resolution framework beyond the GM looks at his/her notes to see what they say about place X. And if the players do succeed in having their PCs fing the widget, then unless the widget is a magic item or spell component there is no canonical way for working out whether deploying it at place Z to try and do that other thing wil work, beyond The GM consults his/her notes and/or makes a decision.

Given that, I think the responsibility falls heavily on the referee. There are many other things that can happen besides armed guards turning up.

I should add, I'm not faulting the GM in the OP here. There's nothing wrong with having the guards turn up! It's just that, when a GM makes that decision, it then seems to me pretty pointless to complain - in the context of a D&D game - that lethal combat was the outcome.

There's plenty of skills for Ocean's 11. This is why I approach DMing as cooperative story telling. Sometimes the players come up with ideas that are much better than what you have planned. Also, less need to keep piles of notes.

 

[Fenris-77]

To me, this comes back to questions about the role of the players in the game. 5e D&D doesn't have a whole lot of mechanics for "Ocean's 11"-ing a situation beyond figuring out what the GM has in mind and then doing that.

That’s a fair hit.

Now that I think about it, most of my 5e hacks are pretty specifically attempts to add some Ocean's 11-ing to D&D. Elminster's 11.

 

[dave2008]

Now that I think about it, most of my 5e hacks are pretty specifically attempts to add some Ocean's 11-ing to D&D. Elminster's 11.

what would those hacks be?

 

[prabe]

To me, this comes back to questions about the role of the players in the game. 5e D&D doesn't have a whole lot of mechanics for "Ocean's 11"-ing a situation beyond figuring out what the GM has in mind and then doing that.

So, probably this is because my games run differently, but I feel as though there's support in 5E for thart sort of play. Part of what goes into my prep is thinking about things enough that I can (usually) have the results of whatever actions the characters take be reasonable. If the characters have been tasked with recovering a McGuffin, there are many ways they can go about it. If in the course of casing the joint they make social contact and manage to talk their way into acquiring the McGuffin, that seems like a reasonable outcome (more so because there are characters substantially less willing than others to just steal it). It didn't feel in play lke "figure out what the DM has in mind and do that." I've been in those sorts of games.

 

[Fenris-77]

what would those hacks be?

I use some hacked BitD mechanics for flashbacks and downtime stuff (Here's to Crime PDF); a work in progress reputation and faction system; use of success with consequences for social interaction along with a different set of potential knobs and dials for players when it comes to planning and executing social encounters.

It currently looks like bag of spare parts, but eventually all of the above will be smoothly functioning parts of whole. The real trick isn't to bash out mechanics, it's to find ways to make the new ideas as light and useful as possible.

 

[pemerton]

To me, this comes back to questions about the role of the players in the game. 5e D&D doesn't have a whole lot of mechanics for "Ocean's 11"-ing a situation beyond figuring out what the GM has in mind and then doing that.

So, probably this is because my games run differently, but I feel as though there's support in 5E for thart sort of play. Part of what goes into my prep is thinking about things enough that I can (usually) have the results of whatever actions the characters take be reasonable. If the characters have been tasked with recovering a McGuffin, there are many ways they can go about it. If in the course of casing the joint they make social contact and manage to talk their way into acquiring the McGuffin, that seems like a reasonable outcome (more so because there are characters substantially less willing than others to just steal it). It didn't feel in play lke "figure out what the DM has in mind and do that." I've been in those sorts of games.

I don't see how the bit I've bloded differs from what I posted:

if a player declares I look in place X to find the widget that we need to do that other thing in place Z there is no canonical resolution framework beyond the GM looks at his/her notes to see what they say about place X. And if the players do succeed in having their PCs fing the widget, then unless the widget is a magic item or spell component there is no canonical way for working out whether deploying it at place Z to try and do that other thing wil work, beyond The GM consults his/her notes and/or makes a decision.

To me it seems to be exactly an instance of what I described.

 

[prabe]

The characters do things, the DM decides how to handle them (which could be autofail, autosuccess, roll, something else)? That seems a lot different to me than "figuring out what the GM has in mind and then doing that." The latter at least implies to me there's one and only one solution for the PCs to hit upon in some way. The former implies multiple solutions--in the case of my games, at least sometimes they're solutions I didn't think of.

It's possible one of us is misunderstanding the other, here.

 

[Pulakhell]

You really seem to be talking about GM stipulations rather than a genuine social contract.

I think it makes sense to discuss with players - perhaps in advance, perhaps at the time - what is tasteful or not, and what one does or doesn't want in the game. But then the GM has to honour that. If the GM is running a game that is based heavily around violent conflict as the preeminent means of conflict resolution (which D&D is), that defaults to death as the means of resolving violent encounters (which D&D does), and then frames a situation pregnant with violence (by having - one gathers armed - guards, hostile to the PCs, turn up in the scene) - well, the outcome is fairly predictable and frankly I don't think the players have done anything wrong.

If the GM didn't want to escalate to violence there were many other options available. It was the GM who involved the guards - and hende made it a scenario about the implicit threat of violence rather than something else - at every turn.

I understand this. Originally during the session when the Druid killed the Lord in the upstairs chamber and alerted the party by roaring, our Ranger attempted to cause a distraction by acting drunk on the lower level. With the guards seeing this they attempted to control the situation by grappling him first. There were no weapons drawn.
Yes there are other ways to defuse the situations, but in the moment, I was shocked that the PCs chose to attack the Lord and Bodyguard in stead of trying to come clean and talk their way out of it.