Realistic Consequences vs Gameplay

[prabe]

Hard choices are fine, but there are going to be players who reject (or at least resent) what seem like no-win situations. If they aren't presented with any good options they'll try something else. I have a strong preference for presenting choice between competing goods; choosing the greater good feels more explicitly heroic than choosing the lesser evil. It feels to me more like choosing how you'll win, where choosing the lesser evil feels like choosing how to lose.

 

[Retreater]

I can tell you as the DM of this group that there was definitely a good option for the party - they could side with the wereravens or even just overthrow the Burgomaster on their own. The problem came with when they went in without a plan, one bored player forced the hands of the rest of the party not looking for combat, and did not work in unity at all.

 

[prabe]

I can tell you as the DM of this group that there was definitely a good option for the party - they could side with the wereravens or even just overthrow the Burgomaster on their own. The problem came with when they went in without a plan, one bored player forced the hands of the rest of the party not looking for combat, and did not work in unity at all.

Fair enough. Sounds as though you at least have a handle on the personalities, here. Ravenloft has a reputation for no-win situations, for as long as I've known about it (early nineties, IIRC), and has never appealed to me.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I can tell you as the DM of this group that there was definitely a good option for the party - they could side with the wereravens or even just overthrow the Burgomaster on their own. The problem came with when they went in without a plan, one bored player forced the hands of the rest of the party not looking for combat, and did not work in unity at all.

The question being: did the players know this as well?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Let me take the sting out of that. I've found, over many years, myself surprised that something I thought was obvious to the players wasn't. It's part of why I've moved towards extreme oversharing of anything important in my games. I beat it like a drum. Because, I found that even if I give my notes to players, they'll still likely miss things I think are obvious. And, even with the notes, they're guaranteed to screw up by the numbers. Largely, finding out how the players are going to go awry this time is a big part of why I still GM.

 

[Retreater]

Let me take the sting out of that. I've found, over many years, myself surprised that something I thought was obvious to the players wasn't. It's part of why I've moved towards extreme oversharing of anything important in my games. I beat it like a drum. Because, I found that even if I give my notes to players, they'll still likely miss things I think are obvious. And, even with the notes, they're guaranteed to screw up by the numbers. Largely, finding out how the players are going to go awry this time is a big part of why I still GM.

I don't know how much of my statements to the group were lost potentially because of a shift to online play. And maybe some players feel a disconnect playing with only voice and on a computer rather than at a F2F game. And clearly there are other things going on around the world that may affect the players. I'm trying to keep all this in mind going forward.
I'm trying to not view this as a ruined situation, but rather as an opportunity for them to reassess and get on track with their party goals - and that doesn't matter what the adventure's text says or my idea of plot is. I just want the consequences of their actions to have ramifications and I don't want to coddle them if they make rash decisions.

 

[Fenris-77]

@Ovinomancer - I would never offer a pair of unpalatable choices if the players hadn't done somewhat to put themselves in a position where that's what follows from the fiction. I'm very PbtA when it comes to outcomes flowing from player choices, and that choice is in the nature of a soft fail state of some sort, to abstract it slightly from the specific example at hand. I'd agree that the module itself has some design issues in that regard and that the DM could reasonably have expected the writer to provide him with a more engaging decision tree with a few more branches.

I'll second your subsequent post about what you, as the writer/designer, feel is obvious turning out to be no so obvious. That happens all the time to everyone I think, at least people who write their own material. I know it happens to me. Over explaining and notes are both good ideas.

 

[Lanefan]

You shouldn't. But... where are you supposed to learn how not to?

If all else fails, the same place many things are learned: trial and error over the long term.

 

[Lanefan]

Now, I get what you're aiming at, I think, which is that hard choices are okay, and I agree. I don't think the presentation of Vallaki is a reasonable hard choice, though, as there's no way through the written material that achieves any good outcome and most result in the town turning against you.

In principle I don't mind this: the module is trying to steer the PCs into a worse situation than they had before by in effect sailing them into a hole from which any way out ends up increasing the overall challenge they have to face.

In hindsight, when debriefing after the adventure, the PCs might come to realize that maybe they'd have been better off never going to that town in the first place. In that regard, the town becomes analagous to a great big multi-faceted trap, which is really cool!

 

[Ovinomancer]

In principle I don't mind this: the module is trying to steer the PCs into a worse situation than they had before by in effect sailing them into a hole from which any way out ends up increasing the overall challenge they have to face.

In hindsight, when debriefing after the adventure, the PCs might come to realize that maybe they'd have been better off never going to that town in the first place. In that regard, the town becomes analagous to a great big multi-faceted trap, which is really cool!

We have different ideas of cool. Unavoidable traps with nothing but bad outcomes don't make my list.