The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

[prabe]

"Exit plan" would also be helpful.

"Quit while you're ahead, or at least while you can."

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is also my experience with D&D combat scenes. Sometimes combat is a really bad idea, but the players are just determined to have combat, and they can't be reasoned with and no matter how many opportunities I give them to talk their way past a dangerous encounter, or de-escalate it, or even just retreat, they will still insist on combat. Then they stare at me with sad puppy-dog eyes as they watch the dice slaughter them all one by one.

Players: "Why did you put that monster in the scene if we weren't supposed to kill it?! That monster was totally OP! I demand a do-over!"
DM: "For starters, 'that monster' was King Oberon of the Fey...your warlock's patron. He was there to give you your next quest."
Players: "Well he looked menacing."
DM: "You wrote the description for your own patron. You specifically use the word 'menacing,' remember?"
Players: "Well you could have at least given us the opportunity to retreat."
DM: "I did. The guards tried to stop the fight twice but you attacked them also."
Players: "We thought the guard was trying to help the monster!"
DM: "Again--not a monster, that was your warlock patron. An important NPC."
Players: "Well you should have been more clear."
DM: "Like when I broke the fourth wall on Round One to specifically tell you that this was your warlock patron? And again on Round Two to tell you that he was immortal? And again on Round Three, to tell you that if you didn't stop you were going to die?"
Players: "...we thought you were trying to trick us."
DM: "Trick you? into not getting yourselves killed?"

The problem is that too many GMs for too many years played games with warn-offs, and then played gotcha in one fashion or another if players listened to them, either by showing they missed treasure, failed to get something done, or even ended up giving the opposition an advantage and then they had to fight it anyway.

Like a lot of things in the hobby, you're often fighting with the heritage of bad GMing, either directly (by people who encountered it) or indirectly (by people who'd heard about too many times). It can take a very long time (if its even possible) to get people out of assuming you're more of the same.

 

[payn]

"Quit while you're ahead, or at least while you can."

Never stop never stopping.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Pretty much never a valid argument because if criminals don't obey laws, there would be little to no justification for ANY laws anyway. Exactly why gun control laws get singled out for this is a mystery to me.

It isn't. You just hear about it more there. But scofflaws and how common they'll be come up in the context of all kinds of proposed laws, especially if the law has some kind of a trade-off in some way.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Boy, some of you all are in love with truly terrible TSR adventures. Or, probably more accurately, your memories of them from when you were 12 years old.

 

[MNblockhead]

Boy, some of you all are in love with truly terrible TSR adventures. Or, probably more accurately, your memories of them from when you were 12 years old.

How dare you! Into the green devil's mouth with you!

;-)

 

[CleverNickName]

I love me some old-school D&D but not all TSR adventures and products hold up over time. For every "Isle of Dread" there's ten "Orcs of Thar."

 

[overgeeked]

I love me some old-school D&D but not all TSR adventures and products hold up over time. For every "Isle of Dread" there's ten "Orcs of Thar."

I wonder what the opposite of rose-colored glasses would be? Maybe "brown-colored glasses" or "gloomy glasses"?

But yeah, Sturgeon's Law applies to everything. Including the new hotness.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Pretty much never a valid argument because if criminals don't obey laws, there would be little to no justification for ANY laws anyway. Exactly why gun control laws get singled out for this is a mystery to me.

It comes up in the cases of new drug regulations and traffic regulations. (Speed limits have to be the most widely ignored laws in the United States.)

There's just not a well-funded organization that pays its CEOs based on how much they can make their members feel like the victims of seatbelt laws.

 

[overgeeked]

It’s good to know the people who argued with me to no end and told me I was wrong about this issue profusely agree with and praise this other person who’s now saying the exact same thing I was. As Mrs. Brown would say, “That’s nice.”