Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[prabe]

I think the number of people who turn up to chess clubs so they can flip over the table part-way through a game is pretty small.

If RPGIng has a significantly larger number of such participants, that would be a worry. But I don't see anything in the OP to suggest that that is what is happening here.

If A is bored by B's play, and therefore takes steps to make things interesting, without knowing more I have to treat it as an open question whether it's the proactive A or the boring B who is "in the wrong". But in any event that's not what I saw in the OP: a player, presuably playing his PC is frustrated by the Mad Tyrant and verbalises that frustration, then the GM narrates more stuff which includes an escalation to violence, and then another player has his PC respond in kind:

{A PC] yell[ed] out something to the effect of "you're crazy and don't deserve leadership here." For this affront, the ruler yelled for his guards to come and arrest that character. In response, another party member tried (and failed) to grapple the ruler and put a knife to his throat​

That's the GM, not any player, who treated violence as the universal solvent.

Nice job with the partial quotation, there.

The party got a private audience with the ruler and things were moving friendly enough, when a player (probably bored with the negotiations and playing the "but I have a low Charisma card") decided to trump the party's hand and yell out something to the effect of "you're crazy and don't deserve leadership here."

Do you see where the OP says the player is "probably bored"? (This is a player the OP says later is behaving similarly in another campaign, so ... probably not the character.)

As to who instigated the violence:

For this affront, the ruler yelled for his guards to come and arrest that character. In response, another party member tried (and failed) to grapple the ruler and put a knife to his throat to take him as a hostage.

The Mad Tyrant is behaving in character; it's a second PC who instigates the violence.

First, as with @chaochou I'm curious about what the resolution method is that was used to make the move from PC yells out to Mad Tyrant takes it badly to Mad Tyrant calls for guards to guards arrive and follow his order to arrest PC. At every point I can see a different possibility: the Mad Tyrant laughs off the insult; the Mad Tyrant personally challenges the affronting PC to a duel of honour; the guards are all drunk and don't come when called; the guard captain agrees with the PC that the Mad Tyrant doesn't deserve to rule, and seeing now a chance to strike against the tyrant takes up that chance. And I came up with those possibilities in the time it took me to type them up.

And none of those may be in character for the Mad Tyrant--who was described as not tolerating dissent. Certainly "laughing it off" is pretty much the opposite of that. And drunk guards? Might as well have a divine figure on a ladder come own to interrupt the execution.

Second, the Mad Tyrant isn't a natural phenomenon. It's an element of the fiction in a RPG, presumably intended to serve some purpose for RPGing. What's that purpose? To create a puzzle for the players, where if they don't guess the right thing their PCs die? (This is @Nagol's analogy to the trapped door.) To allow the GM to tell the players what their PCs should do on pain of dying? A chance for the players to show off their ability to follow the GM's lead? Something else?

The party sought out this audience. It doesn't sound from the OP's description of play that the plan going in was to try to assassinate the Mad Tyrant. This isn't "I failed a check and the trap blew up in my face." This isn't "I couldn't figure out the puzzle the GM put before me." This is "I pissed on an electric light socket."

 

[billd91]

Dice don‘t have whims.

Would you prefer caprice? Does the semantic difference really matter?

 

[prabe]

Dice don‘t have whims.

Missing the metaphor, I presume. Apparently you'd rather have the events play out in some randomly-determined way that might or might not be coherent with prior events and descriptions.

 

[Fanaelialae]

If the DM must roll to determine how the NPCs react, does that mean that players must do so as well?

Does my bard need to roll to see if he's in the mood to flirt with the barmaid? Should the fighter roll to see if he feels like stepping between the wizard and the ogre?

That sort of thing works for a game like Pendragon (within its own context), but is quite atypical for D&D. The players role play their characters and the DM role plays the NPCs. I've, on occasion, rolled for a reaction when it was unclear to me how an NPC might react, but I don't really think it was necessary in this case given what we know of the Mad Tyrant.

 

[MGibster]

Whichever ones are available. In D&D that might be a reaction roll table - first to see how the tyrant responds to the insult, then (if that is adverse) to see if the guards answer the call, then (if they do) to see how the guards respond to the situation of the tyrant being under attack.

I'm not going to roll dice to determine how an NPC reacts to an insult, to see if the guards answer the call of their boss, or even how the guards are going to respond. I'm going to play the "king" as I think a power mad egomaniac would react to the situation. Based on the burgomaster's personality as described in the adventure, I certainly would have allowed the PCs an opportunity to placate him even after he called the guards. Once someone pulls a knife on the burgomaster and tries to take him hostage? Nope. As far as those two PCs are concerned, the burgomaster could not be placated. On the flip side, I wouldn't have led to an execution as I think the PCs would have ample opportunity to break their friend out. It's not like the village has an actual prison.

 

[iserith]

Flipping through the module, I see on page 105 that it discusses possible reactions by the Baron. While it does not appear to specifically contemplate the PCs accosting him in the manner described, it does say: "If the characters get on his bad side, the baron accuses them of being 'spies of the devil Strahd' and sends twelve guards to arrest them, seize their weapons, and run them out of town." If the guard fails, the Baron's henchman and a mob of 30 commoners move to deal with the party. Failing that, the remaining guards just position themselves to guard the Baron's residence with him inside.

What I find interesting is that while one can probably derive the Baron's ideal, bond, and flaw from the text in this chapter, unless I missed it, these aren't specifically spelled out as they are with other NPCs in the module. (It's almost as if the Baron isn't as important as his henchman Izek Strazni who does have ideal, bond, and flaw listed along with his stat block.) These are very important in my view in giving the DM direction on how the NPC responds to actions from the PCs, especially in the context of the social interaction rules in the DMG.

 

[Darth Solo]

Execute the defiant PCs and allow the players to make new characters. Maybe the new PCs emerge from local Revolutionaries.

 

[chaochou]

Missing the metaphor, I presume. Apparently you'd rather have the events play out in some randomly-determined way that might or might not be coherent with prior events and descriptions.

So combat, or any outcomes involving resolution mechanics in your game, only result random and incoherent outcomes?

An interesting suggestion, but your understanding of what I’d ‘rather’ is sadly ignorant of lots of other options.

 

[prabe]

So combat, or any outcomes involving resolution mechanics in your game, only result random and incoherent outcomes?

An interesting suggestion, but your understanding of what I’d ‘rather’ is sadly ignorant of lots of other options.

Well the dice are by definition random. I didn't say they were necessarily incoherent; I said they might or might not be. In some circumstances--such as combat--they represent uncertainty and/or imperfect knowledge. In this situation they remain only offer the potential for incoherence (the guards, guarding the notoriously irrational Mad Tyrant, are drunk?).

Really, though, I was reacting to your refusal to acknowledge the metaphor language of the dice having whims.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Less specific; and yet more specific at the same time. By the sound of things the PCs in this case had all kinds of in-fiction reasons to believe that the King wasn't exactly either nice or forgiving, and that pissing him off (and trying to kill him certainly qualifies under that!) would very likely have dire and fatal consequences.

Which means there's a strong case to be made here than trying to kill him is in effect a glorified version of an educated save-or-die: you either succeed or you die trying or shortly thereafter. All the other mechanics have already been either expended or bypassed.

I applaud those players who took this gamble. It sucks that they lost.

Yeah, I'm fine with them making this move. Especially now that I have more context on the specifics knowing it's from Curse of Strahd.

The NPC in question is indeed mad. He's far from a king, although I suppose he's a tyrant of sorts. He's by no means beyond the ability of PCs to deal with. I'm curious what level they are that any possible number of guards may have given them pause.

Someone was comparing a save-or-die trap vs the save-or-die variant situation I note just above. You asked how much h.p. damage it'd do, and my point is that "die" doesn't care about hit points.

The problem with your analogy is that with some kind of save or die situation, it will either happen or it won't. Whether you're the DM or I'm the DM, the PC will trigger the save, and then they will either live or die based on their saving throw roll.

With the NPC, that's simply not the case. You might play it one way, and I would play it another, and any number of other DMs would play it yet other ways. So no, they don't have to have the same effect.....not unless you have a specific in game means of producing that outcome through dice rolls, like reaction rolls or skill checks to influence or morale checks and so on. Absent those mechanics, then it's just the DM deciding, and he can decide anything he likes.

Therefore, that method is absent the mechanics that are present with the trap. So they are in fact very different.

Were I a player here and the King threw my PC in jail (as opposed to having my head lopped off there and then, which sounds like it's in play for this guy) then sure I'd try to escape - though unless I was playing a Thief-like character I'd assume my odds of success to be approaching zero; it would largely be an exercise in going through the motions.

More realistically, any escape attempt would have to be externally driven; my PC's fate would largely be in the hands of those PCs who were still at large. So, I'd proactively get started on rolling up something new while they sort that out (or decide not to ) and if my existing PC does get freed then whatever I roll up can be stowed away for later.

So you'd try to escape. As would most players, I'd expect. Why would you only expect success if you were a thief? Oh, in the edition you play, that class has mechanics that allow for such actions, right?

Kind of odd to rely on mechanics in only some instances, and to eschew them in others.