Blaming the System for Player/GM actions

[Crothian]

Re-read my post again, Crothian.

It is a competition. Its win or die in almost every fight.

In your post the DM is clearly going outside the usual game with an 8th level party with no equipment. Unless you are saying you are competeing against the DM, and if that's the case he's basically stacking the deck. Your game as described is not typical D&D.

 

[Seeten]

In your post the DM is clearly going outside the usual game with an 8th level party with no equipment. Unless you are saying you are competeing against the DM, and if that's the case he's basically stacking the deck. Your game as described is not typical D&D.

The DM picks monsters for the PCs to fight. Every DM does this, I have never, not even on ENWorld, heard about a D&D game that had no fights.

If the object is not to win those fights, what is the object? To have fun, and die, during the fights?

You can win each fight/encounter, or you can lose, or you can run away, but I dont see many other options. I welcome others to describe to me their campaigns, though, where losing to the monsters is the acceptable tactic/expected outcome.

Assuming winning the encounters is the goal(In addition to roleplaying, please dont misquote me and claim I somehow dont rp, or whatever) of the encounters, and assuming winning means beating the monsters, charming them, diplomacying them, intimidating them, or in any other manner circumventing their plot/traps/tricks/combat, I dont see how it isnt a competition between PCs and the Monsters/Enemies.

The DM is not the adversary, the challenges are, and the idea is to win out against those challenges. I play D&D to have fun with my friends, to roleplay, and to defeat all those who oppose me and take their stuff. Note I said, "Defeat" not lose to, not give up against, nor did I say "run away from" even if sometimes I do run to fight another day, it isnt my goal.

In essence, I play to win. I win by not rolling up new characters all the time, and by having fun. I lose when I need to reroll, and when I am not having fun. If you claim it isnt a competition, that means regardless of what I do, I am expected to have the same outcome, and that sure doesnt sound like fun to me. Which sounds like I am losing.

At least, thats what I get out of it.

What do we consider a fight between 4 PC's and a Level appropriate Dragon, if not a competition? A friendly get together? A battle to the almost death? If its a fight to the death, I'm innit to winnit.

 

[Lanefan]

I've been hearing this, "D&D is not a competition" for years. Man is it ever old.

So the competition is between the PC's and the Monsters. Its a fight I cannot afford to lose, because I dont enjoy making new characters, I enjoy playing my existing characters. I love to roleplay, but I dont love TPK's, and I dont expect the DM to be a balance genius, when in practice, I am far better about balance than most DM's I know.

Which tells me your sessions in particular have come down to a competition between the players and the DM, with...by the sound of it...the DM winning a bit more often than the norm.

There'll always be some sense of competition between the players and DM, if only because it's the DM's job to come up with challenges for the PC's and the players' job to overcome such. That part's OK. The "competition" I'm referring to is the race through the rulebooks to find who can build the baddest-ass PC, particularly when not all the players are interested in such a race.

If I think the party needs me to hit for 30 a round or we lose, I set about finding a way to hit for 30 a round.

A lot of DM's around here talk a big game. "I'm the arbiter of balance and I always challenge everyone perfectly, and everything is wonderful" but I don't see it in my local groups. I see a whole lot of standard monsters from the MM up against our woefully non-optimized groups, so your arguments fall very flat on my ears.

Might be time to try your hand at DM-ing, then.

Me, I'll freely admit that balance gets out of whack in my game...sometimes in the PC's favour, sometimes not...but then, if everything was perfect it'd just get boring...

Lanefan

 

[Seeten]

About my DM, he doesnt know he is stacking the deck. Taking him aside and mentioning the design expectaction of a cr 8 party having magic items that are x in gp worth of magic items elicits a shrug not of disdain, but a shrug of "So you say but I think not" because he just doesnt really get it. He isnt being mean, or adversarial or contrary, he just doesnt understand the design goals or the balancing ideals.

So, we're level 8, he grabs a CR 8 creature, and all is well. Right?

Not really.

Thats ok. My new PC is built for the group, so that I don't outshine anyone. Heh. Its gonna be fun. I do hardly any dmg, no one else deals any dmg, but just wait for the encounters. They'll all continue to be the same.

 

[Seeten]

Might be time to try your hand at DM-ing, then.

Lanefan

Its a beer and pizza group. I go to the game to hang out with friends I've had for 20+ years. It is what it is, but what it is is fairly normal. Most DM's are normal people who just expect the DMG and MM to know what balancing is, many of which grew up thinking giving out magic swords was BadWrongFun and shouldnt be done except in extreme circumstances.

I am GMing our Mutants and Masterminds group.

That game has had 0 near TPK's because I understand balance, and because I insisted all the players make the PC's with CR appropriate guidelines. I dont want to see Superman and Bucky in the same group. The group has interesting characters, they spent lots of points on personalizing, but they all have CR appropriate powers.

And if I did DM a game of D&D, I'd let players use PC's that are in theme for the gameworld, and from any supplement/material that wasn't ridiculous, including optimizing them. But only to the point that the other PC's were also optimized. Having one minmaxer and 3 casuals is bad. Having 4 minmaxers is just fine. Alternately, I'll make the PC's if the players prefer.

I feel the players should be within a certain level of competence of each other. From there, I'll judge the fairness of encounters. If the players are wildly divergent, and some are "useless" and others are godly messes of stats, that doesnt work for me, so I will say no to the useless characters right off the bat. Anyone who wants to play a useless character can go to a WW chatboard and be Caine's housecat, or whatever. He'll have to choose which of the 900 players who plays "Caine" to be the housecat of, of course, but thats not my issue.

 

[Crothian]

The DM picks monsters for the PCs to fight. Every DM does this, I have never, not even on ENWorld, heard about a D&D game that had no fights.

If the object is not to win those fights, what is the object? To have fun, and die, during the fights?

Okay, see when you say competition I think competition between people at the table be it player verse player or DM verse player. Encounters in the game are just that, it is not a competition, it's a fight.

 

[Seeten]

I fight to win.

 

[Crothian]

I fight to win.

That's good, but unless you are punching out the other people at your table isn't your character fights to win? Or are you and your character the same thing?

 

[buzz]

The "competition" I'm referring to is the race through the rulebooks to find who can build the baddest-ass PC, particularly when not all the players are interested in such a race.

This isn't competition so much as agenda conflict, from the sound of it. One group of players wants to pit their bad-ass PCs against some monsters and flex their rules-fu, while the other group doesn't care about that at all, and want to just immesre themselves or whatever.

Neither group is "good" or "bad"; their needs are just at odds.

If the object is not to win those fights, what is the object? To have fun, and die, during the fights?

Seeten has a point (though I don't know why he quoted me at the start of it, as I'm pretty much agreeing with him).

It is entirely reasonable to view D&D as a competitive game with win/lose coditions. "Winning" is surviving the challenge, looting the dungeon, and leveling up. That's what you get XP for, that's how you amass kewl powerz. "Losing" is getting killed, not getting the loot, and having to lose a level (and maybe Con) when Resurrected... assuming your PC can even get Resurrected.

Unlike some other systems, D&D does not reward "being there"; your PC does not get XP just for showing up. And they definitely don't get XP for losing, even when doing so in entertaining ways.

Thus, we can see the game as a competition between DM and players. The DM is pitting his rules-fu against the players', and (ideally) setting up appropriate challeneges to throw at them. This doesn't have to mean that it's adversarial; the DM is also obliged to maintain a level playing field. He should not be "stacking the deck" as seen in some of Seeten's examples. Nonetheless, the "fun" is not going to happen unless there's a good challenge, and the "fun" will only get "funner" if the challenge is met with skillful, imaginative play. Ergo, the overall "win" ("lots of fun" + kewl powerz) doesn't happen without that competition.

(I think a lot of bad play stems from DMs who get the "challenge" part but don't get the "level playing field' part. The DM is not an opponent; the DM is more like a director or referee. His job is to drive good play, and that comes from providing worthy oposition that brings out exemplary effort in the players, not from kicking the crap out of the PCs at every available opportunity.)

Granted, this is one perspective on D&D, though I think it's one that's well-supported by the rules. People certainly do play D&D with non-competitive goals: "story," immersion in characer, immersion in setting.

And, really, I think some of the best games are born out of melding aspects of all these goals together. But, IMO, the challenge needs to be at the heart of it.

 

[Seeten]

That's good, but unless you are punching out the other people at your table isn't your character fights to win? Or are you and your character the same thing?

I dont believe I mentioned fighting with people at the gaming table at any point. Not entirely sure where you come up with such an idea. Does the idea of not liking to lose personally offend you or something?

I fight to win, and my characters fight to win. I like winning. My characters like winning. My characters and I can be dramatically different, save in our desire to survive, and win. In that, they are all like me.