D&D General GM's are you bored of your combat and is it because you made it boring?

[MostlyHarmless42]

I would say the complete opposite. When I write an adventure, the only thing I know for sure is how I intend to start it. How I hope it will unfold and how I think it will end. Players make sure that my hopes will be crushed, reduced to powder, mixed with water, baked and formed into something unexpected that I would not expect.

It is exactly for those moments, where the players breaks my expectations and surprise me that I love being the DM. If they don't, no problems, I'll have a story anyways.

What irks me, is when a DM pushes the players to do the story that HE wants, going as far as punishing players for doing the unexpected. These are the bad DMs.

Exactly this. I feel a lot of the people who tend to have the "gardening" approach to storytelling (those who create characters and books and only care what emerges from the players) seem to sometimes have a fundamental misunderstanding about the benefits of "planned" storytelling approach. Yes, a bad DM can be overly attached to telling they story they want and robbing the players of agency, but the hooks and natural emergence style approach HAS downsides too. For one, it completely disallows truly longterm narrative foreshadowing, something I regularly use at great length to the enjoyment of my players. Currently what one of them enjoys the most about their current game is that I keep dropping breadcrumbs about the heritage of one of their PCs and it is something I'd not be able to do as effectively if I did not have at least a vague plot structure planned out ahead of time.

Second, the other real downside of the natural growth sort of play is that it can easily result in the game just feeling...boring to some.

It's the age old debate of whether serial content (one long overarching story) ir episodic content (smaller independent stories) are better. The answer is both are good for different people. I for one VASTLY prefer serialized content because a mediocre or problematic moment in a story with a longer scale just feels like a moment I have to push through to get to the good stuff, while a mediocre episodic show I just instantly stop caring or watching. After all, why bother sticking around?

More relevant to tabletop games, the trick to doing a longer storied/structured game is to a) not pull a bait and switch on the players and give them clear themes and expectations to work with so they can make characters that actually give a damn about the plot (i.e. don't tell them they will be pirates and then have the game be all "surprise! This is a drow game! cough Pathfinder was bad about this cough) and b) be vigilant as the DM that you don't get too attached to a preset story outcome and try to force it at the expense of player agency.

I run heavily structured and planned out games, but one thing I am always doing is revising said plan constantly. I always plan at least two or three options for every major event that I expect to happen and am quite often still forced to think on the fly when players often create their own choice that I didn't forsee. Frankly having to field those random moments is WHY I enjoy DMing instead of just writing a book. It's where I derive fun. Or when players are constantly guessing in or out of character about what they think will be where the story will be heading. The thing is, unlike a book, I'm not set in stone. Often my players in their musings give me better ideas for how to make things work than I can come up with. I always listen for their input, even if they don't realize they are providing it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Exactly this. I feel a lot of the people who tend to have the "gardening" approach to storytelling (those who create characters and books and only care what emerges from the players) seem to sometimes have a fundamental misunderstanding about the benefits of "planned" storytelling approach. Yes, a bad DM can be overly attached to telling they story they want and robbing the players of agency, but the hooks and natural emergence style approach HAS downsides too. For one, it completely disallows truly longterm narrative foreshadowing, something I regularly use at great length to the enjoyment of my players. Currently what one of them enjoys the most about their current game is that I keep dropping breadcrumbs about the heritage of one of their PCs and it is something I'd not be able to do as effectively if I did not have at least a vague plot structure planned out ahead of time.

Second, the other real downside of the natural growth sort of play is that it can easily result in the game just feeling...boring to some.

It's the age old debate of whether serial content (one long overarching story) ir episodic content (smaller independent stories) are better. The answer is both are good for different people. I for one VASTLY prefer serialized content because a mediocre or problematic moment in a story with a longer scale just feels like a moment I have to push through to get to the good stuff, while a mediocre episodic show I just instantly stop caring or watching. After all, why bother sticking around?

More relevant to tabletop games, the trick to doing a longer storied/structured game is to a) not pull a bait and switch on the players and give them clear themes and expectations to work with so they can make characters that actually give a damn about the plot (i.e. don't tell them they will be pirates and then have the game be all "surprise! This is a drow game! cough Pathfinder was bad about this cough) and b) be vigilant as the DM that you don't get too attached to a preset story outcome and try to force it at the expense of player agency.

I run heavily structured and planned out games, but one thing I am always doing is revising said plan constantly. I always plan at least two or three options for every major event that I expect to happen and am quite often still forced to think on the fly when players often create their own choice that I didn't forsee. Frankly having to field those random moments is WHY I enjoy DMing instead of just writing a book. It's where I derive fun. Or when players are constantly guessing in or out of character about what they think will be where the story will be heading. The thing is, unlike a book, I'm not set in stone. Often my players in their musings give me better ideas for how to make things work than I can come up with. I always listen for their input, even if they don't realize they are providing it.

I should clarify, I am not opposed to prep-work or structure. On the contrary, I think having a solid structure for your adventure is an extremely valuable tool, and as a DM who struggles with improvising, it’s a tool I make heavy use of. When I talk about “DMs who pre-plan a story” I’m not talking about having an idea where you think the campaign is going to go, nor about having a hook, structure, and resolution in mind (three very valuable things to have in your adventure prep!”) nor about using serialized storytelling elements such as foreshadowing. I’m talking about DMs who have specific outcomes in mind and try to force the game towards those outcomes.

I mostly run published modules (though I personalize them heavily,) so I’m no stranger to serialized narrative elements in my adventures. But I try to follow the old chestnut (which I think was coined by The Alexandrian): “don’t prep plots, prep scenarios.”

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But I try to follow the old chestnut (which I think was coined by The Alexandrian): “don’t prep plots, prep scenarios.”

Pfffffft I've been literally saying this since I was like 13, in 1991, though admittedly I always phrased it more like "I don't write adventures, I write scenarios".

It certainly works though. Looking at other DMs I play with, those who do write/use more linear adventures (which includes a lot of APs) have a lot of fragility if the PCs go significantly off course, whereas I've run multiple sessions of the PCs deviating severely from expectations and they thought they were following some tight heavily-prepped plot because the scenario was resilient enough (also admittedly I am at least a "good" improviser so that may factor in).

 

[nevin]

I've been watching this type of discussion go on since I started playing Ad&D. IMO you are trying to fix boring combat with more rules to standardize combat to make it more interesting by the same formula Everytime. Won't work.
my advice to every DM is quit rolling dice in front of your players. I roll mine behind the screen. Most of the time I take what they give me, but I view every fight as part of the story. I fudge thing both in favor of my players and not in favor of my players.
if 30low level archers are blanketing the area with arrows some of em are going to hit. if I build a big bad epic encounter and during the fight realize I over did it and I'm about to wipe my party I fudge down or adjust tactic. What I find makes combat more fun for me is to build the game on players past actions so they aren't just fighting 20 orc 5 with polearms but the clan that's been raiding the city that wiped out the caravan they were escorting . Make as much of the game personal to the party and they'll engage that'll make it more fun for them and for you.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

IMO you are trying to fix boring combat with more rules to standardize combat to make it more interesting by the same formula Everytime.

Yup. Rules 2 and 3 are particularly prescriptive and if every fight has this same limited number of enemies and specific arrangement of tactics, it's going to be almost as dull as if every fight has a lot of 5' melees. If most boss fights are multi-boss, that's going to get old pretty fast too.

I mean, one thing I haven't seen clearly mentioned, though forgive me if it has been, is that you shouldn't play every fight the same way. Sometimes monster SHOULD use totally dumb tactics, either because they are dumb, or because they overconfident, or using some stock strategy they overuse. But equally sometimes they should have very cunning plans. But not ever INT 18 monster is going to have some sort of Xanatos Gambit array of masterplans to get away. I'm pretty sure if you ambushed Einstein in an alley, you'd be able to beat him up pretty good - just because some monster is INT 18 or whatever, doesn't mean it doesn't make mistakes or fail to plan for things, especially when being attacked, rather than doing the attacking. A hard-working set of kobolds may have a better system of fall-backs and and cunning plans than some single overconfident, lazy, INT 18 dragon or whatever.

 

[Charlaquin]

my advice to every DM is quit rolling dice in front of your players. I roll mine behind the screen. Most of the time I take what they give me, but I view every fight as part of the story. I fudge thing both in favor of my players and not in favor of my players.

I have to ask, if you’re so strongly in favor of dice fudging, why hide it from your players? Surely if ignoring the dice and deciding the outcomes you think will make for the best story improves the game, the players would be fine with you being up-front about it, no? Just bring it up in session zero that you are going to treat the monsters’ dice rolls as a suggestion, but ultimately the story is more important and you will change the rolls if you think it’ll lead to a better story.

If you don’t think that would go over well, consider that what you’re doing might not actually be what’s best for the players’ experience.

 

[bloodtide]

The advise here is good enough, but I see one big part missing.

In most modern games combat is an utter waste of time: It's for the players to jump up and around and be all happy that they are the greatest players of the game 4ever....and for the DM to be very bored as they wait for the foes to be automatically defeated. The DM very specifically put zero effort into the combat, because if they did even a tiny amount not only might the characters loose, but they might even die. And worse, if the DM runs the combat and foes even just a bit vaguely average competence, then it becomes just about automatic that the characters will loose and die.

The whole running easy combat for the players wears on a DM fast. Every combat encounter must be simple, with the foes using no tactics or common sense, and really just stand there and wait for the characters to kill them. The DM can just sit there half asleep and ask "oh did you auto win yet?".

So the big answer here is to drop all of the above stuff. Run and play a much more high stakes, hard, fast, and deadly game.

 

[Musing Mage]

my advice to every DM is quit rolling dice in front of your players. I roll mine behind the screen. Most of the time I take what they give me, but I view every fight as part of the story. I fudge thing both in favor of my players and not in favor of my players.

I'm sorry, but I just cannot get on board with this philosophy and always advise the exact opposite. Fudging anything is a fast track to players simply not trusting you as DM. Bar none.

The story is partly generated by the dice, and attempting to control that diminishes the experience. Further, every time I've ever played with a DM who rolls everything in secret (and more often than not fudges rolls), it becomes obvious that our choices and actions make very little difference as the DM has his agenda of how things will go. (Another reason I am not a big fan of railroad games... though that's another topic.)

In one instance of a game I played years ago, a DM was making an attack roll against the character controlled by his fiancee, who was down to 1 hit point... and he declares after confirming her HP status that he would be rolling that attack behind the screen... and that was that. No one ever trusted his rolls again and the game dissolved because it was boring AF with the tension gone, and the realization that he had a fully structured narrative that he wanted us to fulfill.

In another game more recently, our characters were against a far superior enemy that should have shredded us, he rolled the dice behind the screen and we miraculously survived where we clearly should not have. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the 40 pages of story he'd written and didn't want ruined by killing off the PCs... which to me is a red flag. I'm not at the table to play out someone's novel right down to the plot points, occasionally rolling dice for the fun of it.

The dice are capricious, that's the point. If you're not going to honour them then you diminish the experience. The game is at its best when anything can happen. The ideal (to me) way to DM is to have no vested interest in the outcome and be as objective as possible. Once you let go, you can watch the story grow organically, and not based on personal storytelling bias.

That said, there are specific times I roll behind the screen (like stealth, reaction checks, random encounters, etc), for sure - when players shouldn't know the results. But I am fastidious in using the results. It's important to me that players trust that I'm fair and don't fudge anything for them, or (especially!) against them.

 

[Helldritch]

@Esbee wow. The DM rolling behind the screen... That was blattant. If I would have ever done that... my players would have simply left. I roll on the open. Every single player can see the dice and I would never break that rule. You were right to do as you did, but it wpuld have been better to call the DM to roll on the open.

 

[Asisreo]

Combat is nothing special. We put it on a pedestal because that's what we're used to, but we don't actually need mechanics for it. Think if the roles were reversed, social interactions had HP, AC, Saves, etc. And combat was based purely on how you told the DM you'd do it with a roll or two if the DM is uncertain.

It still works, it just changes the focus of the game. You can absolutely run combat without mechanics. And when you do, it suddenly turns into roleplay. Instead of saying "I attack the ogre." It's more valuable to specify what you do and the DM decides based on how he thinks the combatants can work. Like how you saying "I shoot the orc in his eye" might not convince the DM that you'd land your mark, but saying you sweep his legs may have you progressing in this combat section.



Mechanics tend to remove the roleplay aspect of whatever part of the game has them. If a player must perform the persuasion action to reduce the merchant's price by 10%, instead of saying what they want from the merchant, they'll just tell the DM they're taking the persuasion action and only say how if they feel into it, since their "how" doesn't really change the RNG chance. As opposed to basically needing to roleplay a sensible solution enough to convince the DM.

I have no authority to tell you what's correct or incorrect in terms of balancing these mechanics. I only wish to remind everyone that combat shouldn't be worshipped as a sacred cow of successful TTRPG.