D&D General Fighting Law and Order

[Micah Sweet]

I think the locked door is a good example of approaches, which can apply to D&D and other games. Sometimes there's a locked door because it makes sense for there to be a locked door. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a locked door is just a locked door.

To some people such a door would be pointless, but honestly to me it's just part of making the world real. It's kind of like "open world" video games that are anything but. The only things you can interact with are things you're supposed to interact with. That's understandable in a video game world given limitations of design time and memory requirements. But when running a game on pure imagination, we can do better if we want.

I have ways of speeding up exploration for stuff like this that I generally use, but if I've zoomed into a location there can absolutely be things that are just there for color and background. On the other hand, perhaps there was something cool behind the door and they just can't get it. In general I don't put any campaign-blocking aspects behind a locked (or secret) door but there could be some treasure or something that would aid them. I don't ever guarantee success.

But these things are not pointless. The campaign still continues, people move on. But the world will feel more real, more lived in if occasionally stuff is just there because it makes sense for it to be there. I remember a Critical Role episode where there was a chair in the middle of an empty room where someone had been questioned. They became somewhat obsessed with the chair, investigating it, trying to figure out why it was special. The thing is, they had fun with it, and it was just a chair. You can watch the clip here because it's considered a highlight.

You don't have those kind of moments if everything has meaning. The chair didn't suddenly turn into a mimic, the ceiling didn't collapse because they spent time investigating and didn't find anything. It was just a chair. I like when those kind of moments just kind of organically happen as the players interact with the world.

Yup. It's like how not every corpse you run across is undead, and not every statue is a golem.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Backing this up:

I've run the game, in the current campaign, for something like six or seven total people now, over the course of five years. (We've lost and gained a few along the way.) Of them, three players have always, always, always struggled to remember the specific details of several moves; I think Defy Danger is the only one they really know, and that's because most of the "work" for it is on my end--framing the "worse outcome, hard bargain, or ugly choice" when they roll a miss. The ones that are mostly player-side, like Discern Realities and Spout Lore, need to be referenced every single time they come up. The players themselves are frustrated with their inability to remember these rules, and have said as much to me openly, because they feel it should be easy to remember, it just...doesn't stick for some reason.

So the moves are printed (or, in this case, pinned in Discord) for their convenience. They know when they've triggered the move; they just need the reminder on what to do once they have.

I'm glad you have a group of players that enjoy that. I can't imagine playing a game where no one but the GM has any need to or interest in knowing the rules.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is a problem as old as the game: How does a DM get the players to stop just outright slaying all NPCs, but more specifically the "good guys". Assuming that the PCs are at least sort of good, or at least want open access to good/neutral civilization.


This is not a problem in my Hard Fun Old School Unfair Unbalance style games. So here is what happened over the weekend:

Another DM could not make it to his game, so he asked me to cover for him. He gave me his notes, but we had no time to chat. So it's an urban set game, I'm not sure it it's published or homebrew as I only had his notes. Last game the PCs did a task for an NPC, and the game ended at a big party. This game picks up at the party. The players have fun for a bit and then the plot kicks off: the NPC is found murdered...and the PCs get blamed for it. The PCs surrender and get taken to jail. They get informed that they will spend the night in jail as the judge won't be in until morning. The players panic a bit here and try to escape...but fail. As per the plot, later that night a shadowy figure shows up and offers to free the PCs if they do a job for him. The PCs agree to this magically bound quest. While the PCs could have made a quiet escape....they don't. The guards get alerted and alarms are sounded.

And as the city guards attempt to recapture the escaping prisoner PCs, the PCs just go full blown murderhobo on all the city guards. So this is the good city where a lot of the rest of the game is set, going by the notes. And the PCs getting arrested for falsely killing the NPC, that they could have been found innocent for, does not even matter now. The PCs have now just become the worst mass murderers in city history killing many guards and such.

The players never give any of this role playing any thought. They are LOCKED into the idea that ANY combat encounter MUST be a murderhobo slaughter fest to the death. A guard hits them with a net, they must use thier most deadly weapons, spells and abilities to do a ton of damage and slaughter the guard.

After the slaughter fest, the PCs flee the city and go to hide in some caves. And this ends the adventure for the night. Of course, next game brings up the problem: what will the city do about the most vile and evil mass murderers in all of history. Sure you could just ignore it. But most DMs like to have a bit more 'reality based games' where consequences matter.

I sent the game notes to the games DM, and he was a bit shocked the players did the murderfest. There is a chance, he said, he might need me to cover the game next week. So that puts it back to me of what might happen. My reaction would be the super harsh way...killing the characters. And maybe reseting the game with some time travel or something like that.

But this leaves the issue of talking to the players. I'm not really a fan of talking. They think they did nothing wrong by slaughtering so many NPCs, but then still "get" that they had to flee the city as they are now mass murderers. I know from many past "talks" that nothing much will come from such a talk. I'm sure the players will say "anything in the game that gets in my characters way will be slaughtered!!!!!!", as that is exactly what they did.

But....here I am. Asking for maybe another view point? Is there anything new to say on this topic? I guess someone might say that a game must have a session zero where the DM very slowly and carefully tells the players the way good, evil, slaughter and common sense work in the game. Though in this case it's not "my" game. Still the players "get" that it was wrong to slaughter all the guards......but that did NOTHING to stop them.

So, anyone?

That it is another GMs campaign makes this quite different.

To me this honestly sounds like the players are there for combat and killing things. I don't know that a conversation is going to change their tastes. But it also sounds like their GM has wildly different expecations on this front than they do. I would say it isn't your responsibility to figure that out for this group.

I don't think killing the characters is a good idea. That would effectively wreck the GM's campaign, and whatever you think of the players actions, he is probably expecting to come back to a fully functioning table of PCs when he returns. What I would do is tweak things so that the focus is them being on the run and dealing with the fallout of their actions, but not make it any kind of point of no return catastrophe (if it is a good city, maybe they will understand the unique circumstances the pcs were in and offer some other form of restitution to be made in lieu of a more severe punishment, or maybe you can use it as an excuse for them to go on a quest----i.e. the party will be given clemency if they do some big task for the city.

Also it sounds to me like there may be some assumptions around this campaign that were not made clear to you. So you might ask the GM why it is the players see that it is wrong to kill the guards but did it in anyway (not in an accusatory or judgmental way, just in a way so you can understand how this group approaches these kinds of things). But my basic advice is just keep the campaign afloat until the GM gets back. You don't want to overcorrect and cause the GM more headaches, and you are doing the GM a favor so I don't think you can be faulted for the players going murder hobo. Also if the players are having fun, everything is probably fine, and if there is an issue in the group, leave that for the GM and the players to hash out

 

[Faolyn]

That piece of advice for how to make your game more exciting does not interest me, regardless of how long it's been around or how prominently it is displayed in a particular rulebook.

And sure the camera can and will move. Characters die and are replaced, new games with new PCs happen in the same setting, and when they do, the camera moves to them. I myself have run multiple campaigns in two different setting in which more than one of PCs were in play in the same setting. Its one way to get the most out of your worldbuilding. A little show called Critical Role has done the same thing three times now, if you're looking for an example that's not me.

That's not even remotely what I was talking about. Because all this up here? Is just keeping the camera on the PCs. It doesn't matter if Bob the fighter died and got replaced by Jane the cleric; they're still just the PCs. It also doesn't matter if you run two different groups in the same setting, because they're still just the PCs.

The PCs are over here. I would be completely shocked if you chose to shift the camera to the adventures of a group of NPCs way over there whose actions have no bearing on what the PCs are doing, have done in the past, or will be doing in the future. In other words, you don't seem the type to do cut scenes, flashbacks, or flash-forwards. Which means all those things that are happening in the background, all that worldbuilding, still never gets shown. Unless you're into hour-long infodumps or you give the players massive bluesheets of world knowledge every so often.

I mean, I love worldbuilding. I do lots of it. But I've also found that too much worldbuilding for a game or story locks you in and can prevent you from being as flexible as you want it to be, because you may suddenly realize you need to do a certain thing, or that a certain thing you had done doesn't actually work as well as it should. It may even prevent full player enjoyment. For my Monster of the Week game, I had decided I didn't want the "typical" monsters: vampires, werewolves, demon; they're all overdone. I created some new monsters. When my players were learning about the game, one of them said, "can I play a werewolf." This is perfectly allowable in MotW, but I didn't want them in my game, and they didn't want my substitute monster. So I shrugged and let werewolves in. And that player has gone on to say that their character is one of their absolute favorite PCs ever--and, through sheer weirdness in the game, I now have a pack of werewolf park rangers I can use, which will make certain aspects of the world easier for the PCs to navigate.

As a fun aside, for my MotW game, I've done "teasers" for both mysteries so far which featured NPCs only, and at the end of the first mystery, I also did coming attractions for the second mystery (again, NPC only); I plan on continuing that when we finish the second mystery. It's really helped to drum up excitement. And the second mystery--I used a pre-gen adventure I found online--even suggested doing flashbacks, since the event that started everything off happened 18 years before game-start. I didn't do that, because I'm still new to even teasers, so one of these days.

 

[Faolyn]

It didn't used to be, although I can accept that it is now.

In my personal experience, it's been unusual since the 90s.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm glad you have a group of players that enjoy that. I can't imagine playing a game where no one but the GM has any need to or interest in knowing the rules.

...I mean, I literally said they feel frustrated that they struggle to remember the rules. They want to know them, it's just a struggle (in at least one case, likely due to ADHD-related stuff.) It's why I put the rules in easily-accessible places, so they can check them when they need to.

Plus, as I said, this is a few people. Less than half the total people who have participated in the game. This "no one but the GM has any need to or interest in knowing the rules" thing isn't just an uncharitable reading, it's actively in conflict with what I said, simply to cast aspersions.

 

[bloodtide]

UPDATE!

Well, no one contacted me, but two of the players did show up today. Confused. No one knows what the others are doing or want to do. So maybe the group broke up?

 

[Baron Opal II]

In my personal experience, it's been unusual since the 90s.

Me too. I'm old.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah, I'd rather set the scene and let the players interact with it. If they're trying to get past a door, I've thought about where they're trying to get and I'll consider if there's ways of bypassing or listen to their ideas if they make sense. But just like in life sometimes I can't get something to work and I have to try something else. That makes the game feel more realistic and enjoyable to me.

This describes every RPG ever, as far as I know.

Except there's no move, no response, no additional consequence on failure. But that's what this whole tangent is about, isn't it? That sometimes a door is just there and failing to open it means you just failed to open it. Was there anything worthwhile behind the door? Maybe, maybe not. All locks are meant to be open by someone so perhaps you'll find something later and come back. Or maybe I was just drawing up a keep this particular lord has a toad statue fetish that he'd rather keep secret so it's behind locked doors and if the group had opened it, it would have been a funny confirmation of a rumor they had heard.

OK, so the follow-up here doesn't describe every RPG ever. The two things I notice about it are:

* It's not just that the players (as their PCs) can't get something to work and have to try something else. It's also that the GM is not making a move when everyone looks to them to see what happens next.

* The locked door is something the GM has established, prior to play, as part of their prep. The GM has notes about what's behind it (the toad statues). And so to a certain extent the significance of opening, or not opening, the door is already established - ie the players will or won't learn this pre-authored bit of fiction.

I don't know if it's possible to play 5e D&D without those two sorts of things being part of play. I do know that it's possible to play D&D without those two sorts of things being part of play. I've played AD&D (which is a bit creaky) and 4e D&D (which isn't) without those two sorts of things being part of play.

Relating this back to the OP, I would assert with reasonable confidence that using those two sorts of techniques - the GM not making moves when the players plans fizzle, leaving them stuck for the moment; and the GM establishing, by way of prep, some aspects of the significance of certain "revelations" - makes the sort of thing that occurred in the OP more likely.

And I think it's probably feasible for a DMG (or similar sort of GM advice book) to suggest methods and approaches - beyond "don't be a d*ck" - that will help a GM who want to use those two sorts of techniques to nevertheless avoid the consequences that use of those techniques makes more likely. (A rough analogue might be this: using power tools rather than hand tools increases the likelihood of certain adverse outcomes when cutting wood; hence good guidebooks for the use of power tools will include fairly concrete advice on how to mitigate those risks.)

The first game system I thought of that exemplifies some of those methods and approaches is GUMSHOE. But there are probably others. For instance, I think the OP situation would have been improved by better use of NPCs to shape and guide the players' choices (the actual use of NPCs- ie confrontation with large numbers of hostile guards - was an obvious failure). This seems like something that a GM advice book could talk about; but I don't recall ever having seen much discussion of it.

 

[pemerton]

It's like how not every corpse you run across is undead, and not every statue is a golem.

Again, this sounds like every RPG ever, at least that I've heard of.