D&D 5E Boy, that escalated quickly...

[Jabborwacky]

Here are some additional pearls of wisdom for infiltration plans:

1. It's okay to fail as long as you think defensively. Wear masks, create an escape plan, and designate a safe house.

2. The overall reaction to any failed covert activity is proportional to the damage you've inflicted and the defenses you've bypassed. Failing right at the front door is a good example of when to run away and try again later.

3. Recognize demilitarized zones on maps and floor plans. The most prominent example of a DMZ is a courtyard. These places are designed by intention or accident to allow multiple persons unobstructed view over a really large area. They are well lit, offer almost no potential hiding spots, and have no less than two people present at any given time. If you have to go through a DMZ, don't even bother trying to sneak in without taking out the guards first.

 

[thehobb]

From everything I've read here, similar in some ways to some of my own past experiences as a player and GM, it looks to me like everyone shares some blame in this problem.

For the players: It looks like you need to put more effort into your plans. One little peek over a wall is not scouting out the defenses - you've set yourself up for failure like the DM said. If the DM prompts you by asking if you're going to disguise yourself, that is an indicator that perhaps disguising yourself is in your best interests, but it sounds like you ignored that prompting time and again. Lack of forethought, lack of planning, and carelessness is what's leading you to fail. You don't have to scour every possible avenue or ask every possible question, but neither should you be plugging your ears and going la la la as you plow ahead thinking the DM has already spoon fed you everything you need to know.

For the DM: if the players are feeling frustrated, that's totally on you. First of all, it sounds to me like you're expecting the players to make deductions and decisions based on very minimal information. You told them once one of the character's father was in charge of the spy network? If that happened in a prior session, the chances of the party remembering that one tidbit is small unless they found out about that multiple times from multiple sources despite its significance to one of the characters. Then on top of that you seem to think that one tidbit leads to the logical deduction that they should disguise themselves. Why? Why would anyone in that town recognize them or even care about a group of people hanging out in taverns? How would any minions know there were any relation to the big boss? Has that character's father met any of them, ever? Did you ever give any indication to the party that anyone was watching them? Did you give them any reason to think they were raising any sort of alarms with the bad guys?

With no indications as to what's going on behind the scenes, then when something happens, it happens out of the blue like you're completely springing it on them. No matter how you logically think about things happening, if you don't reveal anything to the players then you're not giving them anything to figure out, nor giving them any opportunity to come up with something creative to circumvent the problem.

It is easy for a DM to forget that details you think are vitally important can become easily forgotten side notes to players. In order to impress upon players that something is important, they need to learn about it multiple times in multiple ways.

This leads me to the second problem (or perhaps the same problem) that I think may be happening - you're not giving the players enough information. If the players have spent "days" trying to gather information and you've only given them "vague generalities" as your player professes, then what you're doing is discouraging their efforts. You need to make them feel rewarded for their efforts, and to do that you need to better understand what their goals are (I assume you knew they were trying to gather information) and help them achieve that goal - not hinder them until they finally corner you and can claw the information out of you.

Your players are clearly not as clever as you expect them to be, so don't be such a scrooge with information. I think your players will enjoy your adventures better, feel less discouraged, and in the end you'll probably find it really doesn't impact the mystery or struggle the characters go through.

 

[Rhenny]

Your players are clearly not as clever as you expect them to be, so don't be such a scrooge with information. I think your players will enjoy your adventures better, feel less discouraged, and in the end you'll probably find it really doesn't impact the mystery or struggle the characters go through.

This here does reminds me of many times in games I've DMd or played. It is so easy for a DM (me included) to think that a situation is easy to "sus" out or understand, but often for many reasons, players will not always think about the obvious or even more intricate ways to interact with a scene.

For me, it often happened when our games became less frequent so there were longer breaks between games (where people would forget a lot about the campaign story or their own characters even), or when we played too long in any one session and we started getting tired or less patient.

As a rule, once the players in my campaign make some logical decisions, I try to give them every benefit of the doubt. I don't hold them as accountable for "their words", I hold them more accountable for their "intent."

Iserith and Bawylie have mentioned lots about incorporating this into player declaration of action. It isn't enough for the DM to know what the PC is doing. The DM should also know what the PCs intent is. Knowing that the player is having his PC look for guards will free me up to add some additional information. If I know the guards are not in view at that moment, I may even ask "how long do you look?" or I may ask for a perception check and if the result is high enough, the PC might see a small smoldering campfire or a pack that seems to be hastily discarded and left on the ground, or even some deep foot prints walking around the building. More info is always helpful, and the only way the DM can really give what the player is looking for is if the player makes the PCs intention clear.

Part of what I think both DMs and players have to keep in mind is that most people play D&D as a fantasy escape narrative that uses rules to adjudicate situations rather than a simulation that uses rules to adjudicate situations. Imposing too many demands for specific player knowledge/description of action leans more towards simulation, and at times, some players, will find this a drain/frustrating.

 

[Aenghus]

Player and/or referee frustration can be a big problem if it builds up over time without being communicated or addressed successfully. Players can feel that everything they try fails, even when they change things up and try and be careful. If anything it's worse when a referee is frustrated, as it is highly likely to bleed into the game and result in more negative judgements against the players, which is highly unlikely to be appreciated.

So, if you feel the frustration building up in you, it may be better to mention it *diplomatically* outside the game, before it blows up inside the game . Just mention you are getting increasingly frustrated with the game, give some particulars, and ask for some OOC advice on how to reduce the frustration factor. While there's the risk that you will discover that your expectations are effectively incompatible with the other participants, it's better to discover this as soon as possible and amend things or find a more compatible game.

Referees need to run the game for the players they have, not some ideal player concept. If the referee doesn't sufficiently enjoy the players interaction with the current game, either lower your standards, or change to a game that's a better fit for your players, or get new players. Players need to know the referee's expectations, which is much more difficult than it needs to be if the referee doesn't tell them.

Starving the players of information is an excellent way to build up player frustration. This is a subjective issue, but it's a problem if the players think they aren't getting enough information even if the referee disagrees with them, maybe especially if the referee disagrees with them. Players who aren't getting enough information probably play reactively and try and gather enough information that they can risk being more proactive. I have seen many, many games where the players get too little information, whereas there almost isn't such a thing as too much information (which is a completely different issue to being spoonfed). Things are never as clear to the players as they are to the referee in a conventional game, if you want the players to pick up on particular topics you need multiple references, both subtle and direct. Even so, if the players aren't hooked by a topic they may not follow it up. From one perspective it may seen logical for the PCs to suffer because the players didn't follow up on a topic the referee values, but from another it's an abuse of authority to punish the players for their choices and condition them to slavishly follow the referee's lines of interest. Always remember the players can't see the whole picture, but they will notice a pattern of being treated unfairly.

 

[Hussar]

Some excellent food for thought all the way around folks. This has been a somewhat rare opportunity here since we have three (now) of the players/DMs from the same group giving different viewpoints. Good stuff.

Just on one point about the "ninja-pajamas" and retreat. Well, we didn't need the ninja-pajamas - we made it to to location of the objective. We were about as stealthy as we could possibly be getting over the wall (including using Silence) and ... well... things went pear shaped. :/ Retreat isn't really an option since we knew very early on we'd only get one shot at this. That was a pretty known condition.

To be honest, I think i misunderstood one point. About the father being the spymaster. My understanding was that the spy master was at the same house, but not the same person. Not, I suppose, that it makes a whole lot of difference, but, now I wonder just how many other things I was mistaken about.

 

[Raunalyn]

For the DM: if the players are feeling frustrated, that's totally on you. First of all, it sounds to me like you're expecting the players to make deductions and decisions based on very minimal information. You told them once one of the character's father was in charge of the spy network? If that happened in a prior session, the chances of the party remembering that one tidbit is small unless they found out about that multiple times from multiple sources despite its significance to one of the characters. Then on top of that you seem to think that one tidbit leads to the logical deduction that they should disguise themselves. Why? Why would anyone in that town recognize them or even care about a group of people hanging out in taverns? How would any minions know there were any relation to the big boss? Has that character's father met any of them, ever? Did you ever give any indication to the party that anyone was watching them? Did you give them any reason to think they were raising any sort of alarms with the bad guys?

Well, it should be clear that the enemy forces are walking around with pretty good renderings of each of the characters' likenesses. Not only that, but the frustration appears to be from one player, not all; the experiences between my two players on this very forum are polar opposites. So, I'm not sure that it's all on me. They had plenty of information, and I was fairly free with much of it.

With no indications as to what's going on behind the scenes, then when something happens, it happens out of the blue like you're completely springing it on them. No matter how you logically think about things happening, if you don't reveal anything to the players then you're not giving them anything to figure out, nor giving them any opportunity to come up with something creative to circumvent the problem.

It is easy for a DM to forget that details you think are vitally important can become easily forgotten side notes to players. In order to impress upon players that something is important, they need to learn about it multiple times in multiple ways.

But that's precisely what I did...

This leads me to the second problem (or perhaps the same problem) that I think may be happening - you're not giving the players enough information. If the players have spent "days" trying to gather information and you've only given them "vague generalities" as your player professes, then what you're doing is discouraging their efforts. You need to make them feel rewarded for their efforts, and to do that you need to better understand what their goals are (I assume you knew they were trying to gather information) and help them achieve that goal - not hinder them until they finally corner you and can claw the information out of you.

Your players are clearly not as clever as you expect them to be, so don't be such a scrooge with information. I think your players will enjoy your adventures better, feel less discouraged, and in the end you'll probably find it really doesn't impact the mystery or struggle the characters go through.

I fail to see how I was being a scrooge with information. As mentioned before, what happened was due to poor planning and bad luck. I don't see it as a failure, and having a setback and getting caught trying to sneak into the center of the occupying forces added dramatic tension. Maybe I'm misinterpreting your statement, but it almost sounds like your suggestion is that I should just start drawing up all of the patrols, plans, and scenarios prior to my sessions and hand that all over to the players.

I reward good planning/role-playing. I do not reward poor planning. This particular scenario included both; they got past a heavily fortified position without a serious encounter by having a good plan, and by role-playing appropriately. The second scenario, they didn't even bother to scout the mansion. Again, that's not on me.

I also don't just have my mobs sit in one place and wait for the players to find them. They don't sit, wondering, "Hey...what's all that noise...that sounds like fighting...Oh, I'll just ignore it." They will come look to see what's going on...just like an intelligent person would do.

 

[Aenghus]

I fail to see how I was being a scrooge with information. As mentioned before, what happened was due to poor planning and bad luck. I don't see it as a failure, and having a setback and getting caught trying to sneak into the center of the occupying forces added dramatic tension. Maybe I'm misinterpreting your statement, but it almost sounds like your suggestion is that I should just start drawing up all of the patrols, plans, and scenarios prior to my sessions and hand that all over to the players.

There is a middle ground here. Letting the occasional clue fall into the players laps isn't a terrible thing, especially when it's one way the referee can signal what s/he feels the PCs/players are doing wrong and how to amend it.

I reward good planning/role-playing. I do not reward poor planning. This particular scenario included both; they got past a heavily fortified position without a serious encounter by having a good plan, and by role-playing appropriately. The second scenario, they didn't even bother to scout the mansion. Again, that's not on me.

I also don't just have my mobs sit in one place and wait for the players to find them. They don't sit, wondering, "Hey...what's all that noise...that sounds like fighting...Oh, I'll just ignore it." They will come look to see what's going on...just like an intelligent person would do.

In a conventional game the referee is responsible for keeping the game fun for everyone concerned, especially when things are going wrong. It's OK for the PCs to get into trouble due to player choices or lack of information, but sometimes you need to give them a break. NPCs are sometimes stupid, lazy, venal, corruptible, absent, sleeping, fallible, even the intelligent ones. I see a tendency with some referees to assign their NPCs a groupmind where they are unfailingly efficient and lack flaws, but this can make them unbelievable and make the game too tough on players. My players are intelligent but they make plenty of mistakes, and so do the NPCs.

For instance a PC making a single noise doesn't guarantee that guards will hear it or if they do that they will investigate it. Maybe the dogs are barking outside, maybe there's a branch tapping at a window, maybe a door or window is rattling in the wind. Its possible for the players/PCs to succeed or at least avoid disaster, but be very clear it's due to dumb luck and random circumstance rather than good planning.

"Good planning" is very subjective, this is important to realise. One person's good plan is to another sloppy and full of holes and to another is massively overdetailed. A referee need to give clear feedback to their players as to what they see as "good planning", effective intelligence gathering etc, even if it's not apparent to their PCs. PCs almost always have imperfect information and still have to dare to act, improvising when they find out the flaws in their plan.

It's important for the referee to keep the game fun for the players precisely when things are going wrong for the PCs. It the referee feels the players didn't do their homework, there's the temptation to punish them accordingly, but making the game unfun hurts everyone including the referee.

 

[Raunalyn]

There is a middle ground here. Letting the occasional clue fall into the players laps isn't a terrible thing, especially when it's one way the referee can signal what s/he feels the PCs/players are doing wrong and how to amend it.




In a conventional game the referee is responsible for keeping the game fun for everyone concerned, especially when things are going wrong. It's OK for the PCs to get into trouble due to player choices or lack of information, but sometimes you need to give them a break. NPCs are sometimes stupid, lazy, venal, corruptible, absent, sleeping, fallible, even the intelligent ones. I see a tendency with some referees to assign their NPCs a groupmind where they are unfailingly efficient and lack flaws, but this can make them unbelievable and make the game too tough on players. My players are intelligent but they make plenty of mistakes, and so do the NPCs.

For instance a PC making a single noise doesn't guarantee that guards will hear it or if they do that they will investigate it. Maybe the dogs are barking outside, maybe there's a branch tapping at a window, maybe a door or window is rattling in the wind. Its possible for the players/PCs to succeed or at least avoid disaster, but be very clear it's due to dumb luck and random circumstance rather than good planning.

"Good planning" is very subjective, this is important to realise. One person's good plan is to another sloppy and full of holes and to another is massively overdetailed. A referee need to give clear feedback to their players as to what they see as "good planning", effective intelligence gathering etc, even if it's not apparent to their PCs. PCs almost always have imperfect information and still have to dare to act, improvising when they find out the flaws in their plan.

It's important for the referee to keep the game fun for the players precisely when things are going wrong for the PCs. It the referee feels the players didn't do their homework, there's the temptation to punish them accordingly, but making the game unfun hurts everyone including the referee.

Here's the thing...I gave plenty of information. The problem here is that you are seeing one person's perspective...a perspective that is quite different than the perspective of another player in the group. I felt it was my duty to give my side of the story as well and show that the perspective is likely slightly different than the reality. It's cool that people are taking the player's perspective into account, but ignoring that there is not one, but two different perspectives that show something different.

All of the advice here is good...and I appreciate that advice. The problem is that I already have been following that advice. Hussar mentioned that he was venting...it was just a situation where the scenario was the one that broke the camel's back.

 

[thehobb]

If one player is frustrated, there's a good chance others are as well. Not everyone is vocal about it however.

Obviously I wasn't there, but the events as described are indicative of the players not getting, or retaining, enough information from the DM (aside from their poor planning which I've already addressed). Hussar is saying he didn't understand that the father and the spymaster were one and the same person. How many other players might have that same understanding? If everyone at the table didn't realize they were one and the same person, then you haven't hit them over the head with that piece of information enough times.

Did you ever tell the players that they see people walking around with pictures of their likenesses?
Did you bring it up multiple times?
Did the players even know the guards had pictures of their likenesses, or did they just find some pictures of themselves somewhere out of context?
How many times did you tell them this piece of information?
If the answer is less than 3 times, then you are likely overestimating your players' ability to remember these things.

 

[Hussar]

I suppose a bit of self reflection is in order. I know that I tend to be really goal oriented in play. Doesn't matter what the goal is, but, if we have a goal then I don't have a lot of patience for extraneous stuff.

For example, entering the wizard's abandoned home. Outside the home were a couple of shambling mound guardians. A fun little fight with far too many really bad vegetable puns. No problem. We're moving forward. We get into the home and begin exploring. Cool, no problems. We're learning about one PC's background and that's what we're here for.

Then, one character opens a chest and every monster in the entire place activates and attacks.

It was a fun fight but also rather pointless. There was no real reason to have that fight and, because it was triggered by a single mistake, largely unavoidable.

So, we wind up spending quite a bit of table time on this, and, really it was inconsequential. We didn't really learn anything and it didn't move us forward. All it really did was eat time.

For the current scenario, as far as I'm concerned, getting to the manor was largely pointless. We learned very little of consequence and the whole point of the exercise was getting into the house, talking to the NPC and then moving on. Thus, my frustration. We spent an entire session trying to get to the point of the scenario only to have it fall apart on a die roll. Sorry, three consecutive die rolls, the failure of any of which flushed out plans down the toilet.

If the goal was to go in and kill everyone then fine. But that was never the goal and we spent all that time trying to avoid it. Only to have a 1 in 4 chance of success. Did we make a mistake? Well obviously from [MENTION=72670]Raunalyn[/MENTION]'s point of view. From mine, we did everything reasonable with the information we had and still had very little chance of success.

So now we get to spend another hour of table time resolving a combat that we were trying not to have all the way along.

I would guess that part of the reason for the different reactions is that some players are perfectly happy to just play. The play is the thing for them. It isn't for me. I'm in it for the story which is defined in large part by the goals of the players.

We want to talk to the paladin's father is the goal. Random fight with house guards has nothing to do with that goal, so for me, it's just something to play through until we get to the interesting bits.