Balancing "RP" and "G"

[swrushing]

Also if you are increasing the monsters stats on the fly and, I presume, fudging rolls, why on earth do you bother with dice in the first place? Just describe what happens during 'storytime'.

Because rolling the dice and PLAYING is more fun.
Because rolling the dice and playing gives us details that we like.

Ever buy light bulbs and get home and fine one out of the box didn't work?
Ever buy a CD/DVD and find it didn't play?
Ever buy anything that was defective when you got it home even though you bought plenty of others and they worked fine?

When that happened, did you simply replace the broken one with one that works (fudge), decide to use the broken one anyway (accept the result), or decide to never again buy or use these things at all (use no rules/dice)?

 

[Bront]

I think that with a well planned and thought out game, the dice rolls should lead the PCs down the proper story path, while challenging them. Special rolls create special situations and add drama, but so does a well placed challenge, or a memorable NPC.

That said, die rolls can alter an adventure, or even bring one to a halt, but I never think that a single die roll should be all the PCs have to do in order to figure out the next part, and if that's all their missing (And simply have suffered from a poorly placed 1), I don't see why you can't push them along a bit. But it's generaly not a good design if it's a roll or loose situation that hinges the entire adventure (Particularly non-combat related)

But, it's a combination of characters, rolls, and adventures that meld a story, and to let any one take precidence over the other can destroy the feel.

 

[LostSoul]

So, YES, the question is "why bother to optimize, since the challenge will be "altered" or "scaled" by the Gm to your current strength? This is true whether that "scaling" comes at the pre-scenario pick adversaries and circumstances stage or later during the play as he picks the "are the orcs down the hall drunk" or even if he waits until the dice roll goes wonky.

I guess there are two answers to this (in my personal case). One would be the knowledge that I'm punching above my weight, taking out higher CRs than the average PC is expected to. Which gets me thinking, "Man, my guy is awesome! And since I built him, so am I!"

The other one is that I can show off to the other players (including the DM). "Watch what I can do."

edit: switched to first-person.

 

[swrushing]

I would rather that the game had rules for drama points instead of relying on the DM to fudge rolls to get the same effect. A house rule to this effect (or using an optional rule) would be a good one, since it's what you're trying to do but works within the rules.

That also puts power into the hands of the players, since they can decide what's worth "fudging" for.

and some people prefer having detailed encumbrance and carrying rules while others are fine with "be reasonable and I will call you on it if you get out of hand."

but you don't normally find the "count my weight down to the coin" level guys telling the "don't get out of hand" guys that its cheating.

heck, i bristled slightly (but played along) when my GM in my midnight games asked me to detail my characters items... finding "clothes, some food, and normal stuff and a tattered blue silk scarf" not enough detail for encumbrance. I mean, gessh, it was a an impoverish monk-like character who didn't have any weapons or armor or more than in dnd terms maybe 10 gp of stuff to his name who had an 18 strength... the added detail of "blanket, water skin, some dried jerky and stale bread in a sack, flint and steel, a tattered blue silk scarf" didn't really make a difference.

But, he knew as Gm he was "supposed to" make us track and account for andwrite down on our sheets everything we carried and where and keep a tally of its weight for encumbrances. So we did. The game ran for 18 months. Did i ever once reference the list for my weight carried? nope.

But its probably for the best that the Gm didn't "cheat" and tell us to "just dont get unreasonable" with this.

yup.

BTW as an aside, in my 3 year dnd game, for most of the time, the last two years at least, i used my PAR rule. PAR means Players active roll. Basically, i did not roll for the monsters to attack them. They rolled a d20 plus their Ac to avoid getting hit. You can find this same system in the Unearthed Arcana (EXCEPT IN UA THEY GOT THE MATH WRONG!!!!!!) which came out later. I also did the same for saves... they rolled "spell effect" rolling a d20 and adding the save dc when they threw a spell. So my dice rolling was almost minimal. (I did BTW pretty much steal the idea from buffy and it was a huge success. it gave the players more of a sense of active participation even when it came to dodging. it made getting missed feel like "i dodged" and getting hit feel like "i got myself hit" and less of a passive "troll rolled well" and so forth)

and yet, as i have tried to point out many times, with all those rolls not only open but actually made by the players, i didn't fudge any less or more.

fretting over the integrity of the die roll is like worrying whether the screen door is closed on the submarine as it dives.

 

[The Shaman]

Why play D&D, and not the minis game, warhammer40K, or something similar?

Because allowing the element of chance to determine outcomes without the GM's thumb on the scale is not mutually exclusive from roleplaying.

 

[swrushing]

I guess there are two answers to this (in my personal case). One would be the knowledge that I'm punching above my weight, taking out higher CRs than the average PC is expected to. Which gets me thinking, "Man, my guy is awesome! And since I built him, so am I!"

The other one is that I can show off to the other players (including the DM). "Watch what I can do."

edit: switched to first-person.

exactly, some people enjoy optimizing for its own sake.

BTW, do you have "average PCs" playing in your games?
Do you play in "average games"?

 

[swrushing]

Because allowing the element of chance to determine outcomes without the GM's thumb on the scale is not mutually exclusive from roleplaying.

yes but do you consider allowing the Gm to put nhis thumb on the scale to be exclusive of playing DND?

Just trying to undertand why its fine to ask fudgers why they don't go away and play other games is fine but asking non-fudgers why they don't is off?

 

[LostSoul]

and some people prefer having detailed encumbrance and carrying rules while others are fine with "be reasonable and I will call you on it if you get out of hand."

but you don't normally find the "count my weight down to the coin" level guys telling the "don't get out of hand" guys that its cheating.

But its probably for the best that the Gm didn't "cheat" and tell us to "just dont get unreasonable" with this.

That's another example of a house rule. The more times you do something like this, the more you're saying that D&D RAW isn't appropriate for us. At some point, you have to ask why you keep changing things that you don't like instead of playing a game that is a good fit for you.

If you don't make many house rules, or don't find that you often need to fudge rolls, because the RAW work out for you in most cases, D&D is still probably worth it (if you like the D&Disms).

If you are making a lot of house rules, or you find that you often need to fudge rolls, then you might want to look at another game that will give you what you want without having to alter things.

 

[LostSoul]

exactly, some people enjoy optimizing for its own sake.

BTW, do you have "average PCs" playing in your games?
Do you play in "average games"?

Nope, we're all multi-millionare supermodels with twinked-out PCs.

I guess an average PC is one who is appropriately challenged by the ELs that the book says he should be.

 

[The Shaman]

I think that with a well planned and thought out game, the dice rolls should lead the PCs down the proper story path, while challenging them.

I prefer to think of it as the "most likely" or "probable" story path.

That said, die rolls can alter an adventure, or even bring one to a halt, but I never think that a single die roll should be all the PCs have to do in order to figure out the next part, and if that's all their missing (And simply have suffered from a poorly placed 1), I don't see why you can't push them along a bit. But it's generaly not a good design if it's a roll or loose situation that hinges the entire adventure (Particularly non-combat related)

I'm not 100% sure I understand your point here, but I will respond to the idea of an adventure hinging on a single roll: in my humble opinion, that's poor adventure design.

I'm running an investigative adventure right now. Investigative adventures are really tough for me as a GM, because I find it challenging to create the right balance between offering clues that are either too obvious or too obscure. Generally the first time I run an investigative adventure I'll work with the players out-of-game so that they can develop a sense of how I place clues and build the puzzle to be solved.

While I don't consider investigative adventure design to be among my strengths as a GM, I do know not to prepare an adventure such that it hinges on a single clue. I create multiple clues leading to the solution of the puzzle to avoid a terminal bottleneck in which a single die roll determines success or failure.

What this does is put control of the adventure in the hands of the players: they have access to multiple clues, and can find their way to the solution by more than one path depending largely on their choices and luck. That doesn't mean they will always succeed, however - in the adventure that I'm running right now, the adventurers mucked up an interview with one witness (in part because on an unsuccessful skill check), ignored two others, and never came into contact with two more (in part because of a successful skill check). However, a sixth witness provided another clue that the players and their characters recognized, and it appears that the characters may yet solve the puzzle.

Here's the thing: if the players and the adventurers had in fact missed all six pathways (and for a time it looked like it might go that way), I had no intention of "nudging" or "fudging" anything to get them back on track. They would not solve the puzzle, and the game would go on from there. I imagine that some GMs here would find this outcome unsatisfying: it's not memorable, it wastes my hard work, it's frustrating for the players, and so on - some might choose to cook up another clue at that point and drop it in the adventurers' lap, or fudge a 'bad' die roll, in order to "keep the plot moving" along the "proper path." However, it's the only outcome that reflects the results of the players' decisions.

I created the adventure and assigned a variety of different means of solving the puzzle, involving a plethora of possible skill checks and roleplaying opportunties, and let the dice fall where they may - there is no "proper story path," only a set of more or less likely outcomes at which the players arrive through good gameplay and a bit of luck.