D&D General What are the “boring bits” to you?

[Lanefan]

I find it boring to not get to roll dice on my turn in combat. If I'm a caster and cast fireball, then all I get is to tell the DM to make Dex saves. I liked being able to attack the bad guy's Reflex save that a past edition had.

If you're casting a fireball then why aren't you rolling a mittful of damage dice somewhere in the process?

 

[Tonguez]

Spending 10 minutes talking to the NPC you're buying boots from is one thing, spending two hours talking to that NPC is something else...

Ahem, no, I don't railroad. But are you seriously OK with the PCs going off and doing whatever? Really?...

And IMHO, anyone who GM's a pure sandbox campaign like you're suggesting, has a lot more time on their hands than I do...

Um who is running these NPCs - if You are having a 2 hour conversation with the player characters then how have you not slipped in a set of rumors and pointers to the main adventure?, or have a new distraction appear to draw the PCs away or at least have the NPC tell the PCs that they're busy and have to go?

 

[cranberry]

Um who is running these NPCs - if You are having a 2 hour conversation with the player characters then how have you not slipped in a set of rumors and pointers to the main adventure?, or have a new distraction appear to draw the PCs away or at least have the NPC tell the PCs that they're busy and have to go?

It wasn't me. I wouldn't have allowed it to go on that long.

Mr. 2 hour roleplay is also the same guy who takes a long time to decide which spell to cast.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

When other players are impatient with the odd little interests of PCs that aren’t theirs. I’m very sorry that anything that isn’t directly “adventuring” bores you, Jimothy, but everyone else is having fun so maybe chill out.

The Tiffany Problem used against the PCs.
That is, when someone’s false idea of accuracy in some context threatens the fun of other players because “people can’t do that” or “Tiffany is too modern a name”.

Enemies that never flee or surrender. If the battle is basically over, end it. Combat is fun when it’s tense, not when it’s watching a countdown to when you can do something interesting again. At that point, all the things that make combat fun invert and become what makes it excruciatingly boring.

Needless restrictions on characters. If no one at the table can see a good purpose to a restriction, it’s bunk.

PCs that trust no one and have no ties to anything. Why are you here? I don’t want a blank look at the table when I ask everyone what they are doing during downtime. I don’t want to have to coax literally any hooks or levers out of a PC. Make PCs that care about stuff and have reasons to be with the group.

 

[Tonguez]

It wasn't me. I wouldn't have allowed it to go on that long.

Mr. 2 hour roleplay is also the same guy who takes a long time to decide which spell to cast.

Yeah that's a whole different issue, as another party member I'd be insisting on moving on - in character if possible

 

[SableWyvern]

To me it's not negotiable: a retired or not-currently-adventuring PC is still a PC and still belongs to its player, even if that player has left the game; and if the DM wants to use it for something that player's permission is required first.

Wait, what? Am I misunderstanding something here, regarding the part I bolded?

If you leave the group, you don't get any say in what we do in your absence, and we don't need your permission.

 

[Lanefan]

Wait, what? Am I misunderstanding something here, regarding the part I bolded?

If you leave the group, you don't get any say in what we do in your absence, and we don't need your permission.

Sorry, but that character is and remains mine for life even if I'm no longer in the game. Yes the character's in your setting, but that doesn't make it yours (or anyone else's) to play unless I've given permission for such.

 

[SableWyvern]

Sorry, but that character is and remains mine for life even if I'm no longer in the game. Yes the character's in your setting, but that doesn't make it yours (or anyone else's) to play unless I've given permission for such.

Even if I agreed that you have any right to do this (I don't), I just don't see how it works on any practical level.

Are we obligated to continue to acknowledge your character's history as well? Can we write them out of the game, as if they never were or do we need your permission for that as well? If the history up until the moment you leave the game must remain, how are we allowed to deal with the fact the character has just ceased to exist?

What happens if the PCs meet an NPC who interacted with your character (assuming the character hasn't been written out of the game)? What if things happened of screen with your character, that didn't matter then, but do matter now? Are we never allowed to discover what happened?

What happens if the character is replaced by a clone? Are you claiming ownership of the clone as well?

If we want to, we can include (imaginary versions of) actual, real people in our game, without their permission. How do you conclude that you have more rights to the representation of an imaginary person that existed in a shared imaginary space, than real people do to their imaginary likenesses? What about characters from other sources of fiction -- should I get permission from an author before using their characters in my game?

In what way do you feel you are being negatively affected if the character is being used without your permission? What about if you never know your character is being used?

Is there any kind of time limit on your ownership, after which the character enters the public domain?

Edit: From a very practical perspective, looking at how this might actually work in reality, no discussion about the future of a character would be likely to come up before the player left, but the PC would not continue to play a major part in my game. Probably, some vague comment would be made about how the PC went off to rule his barony in his manor, and we'd continue. I'm not sure if you'd consider making that decision for the character a breach of your rights, but that would probably be the end of it. However, it may happen than five sessions later, one of the players says, "Oh, Lanefan's characters barony is not far from here -- we should drop in and see if he knows anything about what's going on in the area, and catch up for old time's sake." If that did happen, I would absolutely not pause the session to call you looking for permission. We would play out the scene, and I can't imagine any reasonable person having a problem with that -- although, most likely, you'd never know it happened, and would thus have no reason to care, anyway.

And a further edit: The version of your character that exists in your imagination is yours, and only yours. No one can do anything with it, other than you. The version of your character that exists in the imaginations of the other participants? That's at least as much theirs as it is yours, and you have no more authority over those versions than they do over what goes on in your imagination, especially if you are no longer participating in or engaging with the shared imaginary space were those versions exist. Any authority you ever had over the version of your character that exists in the imagination of the other participants, you only had because they elected to give you that authority (and if they were actually imagining your character in a way that's at odds with your own vision, even while you were participating, that's their right, as long as they weren't being disruptive about it).

 

[MNblockhead]

Tinkering around with mods in Foundry to get automations to work correctly.

And the only reason THAT is an issue is dealing with combats with large numbers of combatants at high levels with with multiple AOE spells going off, causing damage to large numbers of combatants, plus having to apply and track conditions on multiple combatants. Ugh.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This kind of assumes two things:
--- that you and each other player will consistently do what they "should" do on each turn (IME rarely if ever the case); and
--- that the GM isn't varying the terrain, enemy tactics, etc. enough from one combat to the next.

I absolutely expect that the GM should do so. I find most TTRPG GMs do not do so. Flat planes with, at best, some trees or very occasional man-made cover. The only game I have ever played that consistently featured meaningful terrain stuff was 4e D&D. And "theater of the mind" is the straight-up absolute death of terrain stuff. I've yet to meet a TOTM DM that can keep and communicate a mental map that good.

As for the former: Of course one should be concerned about what one "should" do. It is a fight. The objective is to win, whatever "winning" means in context (e.g. not all fights are about killing or even damaging anyone.) That's...literally the point of getting into a conflict, you expect to get a return. But short-circuiting the process with an unassailable automatic win is just as dull as saying, "I roll Persuasion to get the Duke to give us help <clatter> 19 plus Charisma plus skill bonus." Yes, strategy has a valuable place; but designing things so unless you aim for utterly overwhelming strategy, you are guaranteed to suffer overwhelming defeat sooner rather than later is dull. Without the crucible of tactics to actually have sequential decision-making that matters, strategy becomes a lot of talking and then an uneventful guaranteed win. That doesn't mean we should ignore or neglect rules design that rewards strategic behavior; rather, it means that strategy alone without the tactical side quickly loses its savor.

Thing is, in reality after a few battles most parties would likely come up with a series of SOPs quite quickly, much like a basketball team's set plays.

I have yet to see small-unit tactics that can be so distilled that a flowchart can quickly and correctly identify the most useful behavior in any given moment--except in TTRPGs (especially those with a disdainful attitude toward tactics.)

The answer to this is to have chaotic players at the table playing chaotic characters who don't follow orders or scripts and who are going to do their own thing - whatever it might be, probably different every time - in any combat that arises. And if you ain't got such players, become one yourself.

I don't enjoy gaming with people who intentionally try to make things worse for everyone else in the group.

Again, you seem to be focusing only on the optimal choice. What about the fun-risky-entertaining choice that maybe isn't so optimal?

Because it is a conflict, where there is risk of serious harm if partial or total defeat occurs. I cannot entirely eliminate that risk. Really, I wouldn't want to, hence my issues with "absolutely unequivocally win the fight before it ever starts" stuff. However, I can manage it, turn it to useful ends, reap rewards and minimize losses. That is the point of it being a game, and not merely a freeform improv session.

Put another way, instead of thinking "what does the flowchart tell me to do now?", think "what can I do here that nobody will expect but that also (hopefully) won't lose us this fight?" And then when something comes to you, just do it. Don't ask anyone if it's a good idea, never ask permission - just effing do it and let the chips fall where they may.

I genuinely feel like a bad person if I do that sort of thing. As in, it actively damages my ability to have fun when I try to do that. Guilt, frustration, dwelling on how whatever went wrong is my fault, etc., etc. I cannot enjoy playing in that way. It's just not compatible with my personality.

That's what I'm proposing: thinking outside the flowchart is what keeps the brain engaged; and if an unexpected action doesn't present itself in this combat, it will some other time.

It keeps the brain engaged only by making the problem worse. I cannot bring myself to do that--and I certainly cannot bring myself to WANT to make everyone else dance to my tune because I caused a problem and then required everyone else solve it for me.

Another thing I've seen done, and rather hilariously, is the players keep their in-character conversations going right through the combat, even if the topic has nothing to do with anything. Yelling across the battlefield about who's going to win the village horse race next week, for example. Never mind that if the enemy can understand you they'll wonder what the hell code you're using...

Well, that would be the roleplay I mentioned, which has nothing really to do with the combat at all.

Agreed in principle up to here.

"Win the fight before the dice are rolled" simply moves the interesting bit from the combat itself to the planning and strategizing piece beforehand - in theory, anyway. And if face-charging those foes means you'll probably die but good strategizing means you'll very likely live, I'd call that overcoming a challenge rather than saying there wasn't a challenge in the first place.

My problem is, I find that the "good strategizing" is almost always little more than "exercise the most minimum form of common sense, and collect the absolute most basic information about the environment (that, for some reason, wasn't just explicitly told to you by the being who is your eyes and ears, aka the DM)."

It's very similar to the issue with attrition traps (from the "what are traps for" thread). That is, attrition traps bore me because the answer to them is either paperwork (roll dice, check numbers, alter resources if necessary, move on, nothing meaningful happens, just a slow creep of numbers going down because the DM decrees they go down) or a One Weird Trick that isn't actually that weird and can usually be observed by literally just a casual glance at the environment (or yet more paperwork like Perception checks).

That said, if their planning and strategizing takes half the night I might end up snoring behind my DM screen. And yet as a player this sort of thing can be fun, if it isn't overdone.

Sure; but isn't that also what I had pointed out above, that just as overly-long combats are certainly a problem even for me, overly short combats are too? Neither simplicity nor speed is an unalloyed good.

I thoroughly enjoy every one of the things you mentioned, and object strenuously to your subjective opinion of them. What you want doesn't sound like a fun, meaningful RPG experience in a verisimilitudinous imaginary world to me, and that's what I want.

I mean, that's been pretty much my experience for each thing they described except the "info dumps" (I love lore, I'm totally happy to sit listening for hours). Inventory management? A dull frustrating game of hot-potato until you've made the annoying penalties go away. Precise tracking of every last ration and every single piece of ammunition? You'll just always make sure to buy yourself back up to umpteen-zillion every time you go back to town, to ensure you never, ever run out--unless the DM plays sillybuggers and takes your equipment away. A mountain of paperwork for a minute's verisimilitudinous "I eat my rations and sleep." Domain management means either "hand off all the actual management to NPCs who you hope won't betray you" or, per the above, lots of paperwork.

And every sandbox campaign I've ever considered playing, I immediately start asking myself, "Okay. What's the point? Why do I care what happens here, to these people?" I struggle greatly with pretty much every "build your own fun" game under the sun--the only "pure" such game I've enjoyed was Minecraft. Everything else, there IS a core story, you just don't have to focus on it.

Interesting, but isn't that entirely backwards?

Ultimately RP-shopping ends up being the players faffing about not being able to decide what to get or how for how much and it's generally completely uninteresting and the shopkeeper needs to present exactly what he has available and for how much etc. etc. Tedious.

Not at all. I'm talking about things like:

• When the party Bard in the DW game I run went looking for a magic-infused musical instrument, and we spent probably about an hour discussing, haggling price, offering adventuring services, getting to know the merchant and their family and history, etc.
• When my buddy the Fighter blew 90% of the party's wealth commissioning the finest cloak money could buy for my paladin, because he felt indebted due to the lessons he'd learned from said paladin, and wanted something suiting the nobility and tenacity of the character
• When a different paladin I was playing in a sci-fantasy setting stumbled upon evidence that our enemies were a step ahead of us because he wanted to (personally) inspect the gear we'd requisitioned to make sure that it met his (shall we say, antiquated, or perhaps antique) standards

Roleplay shopping is where you make the process itself enjoyable as an exercise in roleplaying--and as a vehicle for delivering more gameplay, e.g. commissions, quests, overheard rumors, etc. It isn't wasted time, because you give the NPCs life and character, and leverage that life and character to bring about future scenes of interest and danger.