GMforPowergamers
Legend
that is my thoughts tooWas the DC to not trigger the yellow mold above 15? If so, the player took a risk and got burned - them's the breaks.
that is my thoughts tooWas the DC to not trigger the yellow mold above 15? If so, the player took a risk and got burned - them's the breaks.
i'm not sure I breezed past it as much as it didn't seem to matter... and at no point did I say I would tell a player what one they could couldnt' should or shouldn't climb... i even said what it would take for me to ask for clairfication...I read with a bit of frustration and bemusement the exchange where Celebrim gave examples of four garden walls, each with likely different difficulties to climb, but also potential hidden hazards, and @GMforPowergamers seemed to breeze completely past the point of the player owning his character's decision about which wall to try. I
if you mean 4 very different walls for no real reason... yes that would be an odd situation in one of my games... one that most likely would lead to investigation before climbingI have to wonder if the gaming style GMforPowergamers uses works for him in part because the sort of complex encounter areas I'm describing, that are typical of my games just don't occur in his games.
oh man I have too... and if something isn't keeping it intresting that is the fastest way to make me either fall asleep or just not care.I've played at tables with Open World styles which I describe as, "We never move off the stage, the GM just changes the backdrops" were all encounters occur basically on a stage without obstacles or boundaries or important features other than the NPCs.
man I would hate that...You can go anywhere you want in these sandboxes because they are just a flat stretch of sand with different NPCs to meet. The game wouldn't play much differently if we were summoning NPCs to meet us on the stage rather than going to them. Space doesn't matter much in such games.
I used to alternate between battle map and theater of the mind (normally with a hand drawn estimate) but the theater of teh mind ones were becuse TOO much was going on (like the fight in the elemental chaos between 3 clock work titans where the PCs were moving through the moving gears and the titans were moving through different elements...and it was 3 dimensional... I don't think I could have battle mapped thatIf you have that sort of thing going on, and you aren't using things like Flanking or battlemaps or anything but theater of the mind, then you probably rarely run into situations where the fictional positioning ever does matter.
omg... this got me laughing so hard. My players are so invested in the worlds I almost never have the most accurate or detailed trascript, and my narration has to be short and to the point cause my players will just steamroll over once they get something in there heads.heavily relying on DM narration for the entire transcript of play. T
no one is taking player agencyIf you take away player agency, and you aren't going to call it Railroading, what are you going to call it?
I still don't see how your way in anyway makes it better. Sorry. I have played in good and bad games in both styles... a good game is good no matter what.I would say that even in the abstract from a process or conversation flow point of view, one approach is clearly better at avoiding those pitfalls though for no apparent downside. It may just be that someone doesn't prioritize this aspect very highly.
I disagree... and most examples even of "please phrase it right" come with "say this instead of that" but if you KNOW what that is then you can translate it from this...Sometimes what they say isn't sufficient to determine if there's an uncertain outcome or a meaningful consequence of failure, what the DC is for the approach to the goal, or whether the attempt has advantage or disadvantage.
but YOU assume and add to arguments all the time on the boards... you assume I take agency form my players and dictate there actions even as I tell you those actions didn't matterI agree the DM shouldn't just assume and add whatever they want though.
Exactly! I gave an example of a simple back and forth dialogue between players and DM at the end of my own quoted post.If the DC WAS 15 or lower, but they got hit with the mold because they "weren't specific enough..." I don't like that. Better for the DM to ask the player to elaborate exactly what they are searching "There are lots of things in the room to search, can you be more specific as to what you are doing?"
ditto on my side... my surprise rules totally favor the PCs (even if they are not always heroic)Nope, because the NPCs are not the heroes.
THIS is the problem. If someone says, "I investigate" having them do any activity at all is adding to what they said. I literally can't go just with what they said. Investigate what? Investigate where? Investigate how?the solution (in my mind) is to just insure that you as teh DM don't add anything... just go with what they said.
This is probably just semantics, but I view it as only a challenge to the PC, but since the player plays the PC, he's involved as well.It’s been a pretty active thread so maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall seeing you ask that at any point. Had you done so, I would have answered just as I did Umbran. Both, undoubtedly.
I read with a bit of frustration and bemusement the exchange where Celebrim gave examples of four garden walls, each with likely different difficulties to climb, but also potential hidden hazards, and @GMforPowergamers seemed to breeze completely past the point of the player owning his character's decision about which wall to try. I disagree with how Celebrim uses the word Railroading (I subscribe to a purely pejorative definition), but he's completely correct that if I as the DM simply let the player roll athletics and then narrate him climbing over the easiest wall, I've taken control out of the hands of the player, and implicitly communicated that there were no hazards on any of the walls.
I've explained exactly why it matters at least three or four times (Charlaquin probably more), and Celebrim did in that very post, and you keep ignoring it.i'm not sure I breezed past it as much as it didn't seem to matter... and at no point did I say I would tell a player what one they could couldnt' should or shouldn't climb... i even said what it would take for me to ask for clairfication...
I actually had quite a lengthy debate because I said earlier (I don't blame you if you missed it) that in a perfect world it would be 100% character and 0% player skill in my mind.... but that is impossible, so I do everything I can to minimize player skill input and maximize character skill...It’s been a pretty active thread so maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall seeing you ask that at any point. Had you done so, I would have answered just as I did Umbran. Both, undoubtedly.