Cheating, Action Points, and Second Wind

[marune]

According to the demands of the storyline and logic of the world, surely? I'm not going to give out a magic item just because some chart says I have to- I'm going to give out a magic item if a bad guy had a magic item and the players kill him for it.

The DM has to make the treasures found "believable", e.g. a Beholder doesn't carry a magic sword. That's the only "internal logic of the world" relevant in a gamist RPG like D&D.

And, of course, in any level-based system they level up when I damn well say they do. But that's more of a house rule.

It's a common one and it is a very bad idea because it breaks the fundamental role of the reward system : tell the players what is a good behavior and what is a bad one.

I thought the charts were guidelines, suggestions, optional? How else is a GM going to build a world to taste if he's got to follow the inane demographics of the DMG?

The fictional word is a deep & rich (if you want to) bakground to set up challenges in D&D, nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Professor Phobos]

This is the aspect of the problem of DM fiat that I discussed in the original post. Sure, everything in the rules is a guideline for the DM. However, DMs run the risk of player revolt if they do too much change against the expectations of the other players.

Hell, are you kidding? I'm pretty sure my players would walk if I never surprised them. And, quite frankly, if I had a player who revolted if he decided my world didn't have enough magic items or something like that, I'd let them walk. No chart can tell me what to do. And if the only group I could find insisted that I had no discretion in treasure or XP or NPC design, if my responsibilities were as rigidly defined as some people here advocate, then I would stop GMing. I'd stop playing if a GM rigidly restricted the players, hell I'd stop playing if my GM didn't get to use his imagination.

It's a common one and it is a very bad idea because it breaks the fundamental role of the reward system : tell the players what is a good behavior and what is a bad one.

That is completely silly. They know that stuff already. I find keeping track of XP awards tedious and I inevitably forget about them until my players ask, "Hey, have we gotten any XP for the last 5-10 sessions?"

I usually say, "Sure, how much do you want?" or "Just make any changes you deem reasonable." For a while I used a "You get an automatic 1 XP every session, keep track of it yourself" system, but even that got annoying. (Obviously a different game than D&D)

In a level system, I'd probably just have them level up at arbitrarily designated "storyline escalation" milestones, or whenever they got around to asking about leveling up.

 

[marune]

Hell, are you kidding? I'm pretty sure my players would walk if I never surprised them. And, quite frankly, if I had a player who revolted if I decided my world didn't have enough magic items or something like that, I'd let them walk. No chart can tell me what to do.

How it feels to be a abusive DM ?

 

[Professor Phobos]

How it feels to be a abusive DM ?

Well, I did get a lot of back talk, but when I cut out the player's tongues the problem was solved...

 

[Mallus]

The DM has to make the treasures found "believable", e.g. a Beholder doesn't carry a magic sword. That's the only "internal logic of the world" relevant in a gamist RPG like D&D.

That's funny.

It's a common one and it is a very bad idea because it breaks the fundamental role of the reward system :

That's funnier. There are rewards in playing D&D outside XP. Both long-running and successful campaigns I know of dispense with XP-as-reward entirely. You can read about both of them in the Story Hour section of ENWorld, in Rolzup's "Chronicle of Burne" and shilsen's long and popular Eberron tale.

tell the players what is a good behavior and what is a bad one.

In my game, good behavior is enjoying yourself while entertaining your fellow players. Bad behavior is helping yourself to my 16-year Scotch without asking permission first.

BTW, I'm noticing your definitions are a bit rigid.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, I did get a lot of back talk, but when I cut out the player's tongues the problem was solved...

Did you ever have a TPK (Total Player Kill)?

 

[Professor Phobos]

Did you ever have a TPK (Total Player Kill)?

Nah, if you keep them on antibiotics they won't get any infections from the chains. The trouble is keeping their muscles from atrophying as prisoners. If you let them out for exercise, they try to escape!

 

[LostSoul]

In my game, good behavior is enjoying yourself while entertaining your fellow players.

What if you defined what those things were and rewarded XP for that?

Or another step further - defined those enjoyable moments, rewarded something that makes those moments more possible?

Let's say you all get a kick out of cool, off-the-wall moves in combat. When someone does one of those cool things and the DM notices everyone is into it, he gives the player an Action Point.

Those Action Points, when spent, allow you do do/succeed more easily at the cool, off-the-wall moves.


I played in a campaign of D&D where the enjoyable thing was to kick ass & dominate in combat as a group. We were on a timeline facing status-quo encounters, so we knew that if we maxed out our XP per day, we'd be "ahead" on the party level - EL scale. Making it easier for us to kick ass, which is what we wanted.

We looked for random encounters whenever we could, trying to conserve our resources as much as possible. When we took actions - when players made choices - that allowed us to get more XP without setting us back, we all got excited.

It was a positive feedback loop - do cool stuff, get rewarded with the ability to do more cool stuff, which makes us want to do cool stuff even more, then we'd get more rewards, etc.

I like reward systems like that; so, for me, when one kicks in to support the style of play I want, it's great.

 

[marune]

I played in a campaign of D&D where the enjoyable thing was to kick ass & dominate in combat as a group. We were on a timeline facing status-quo encounters, so we knew that if we maxed out our XP per day, we'd be "ahead" on the party level - EL scale. Making it easier for us to kick ass, which is what we wanted.

We looked for random encounters whenever we could, trying to conserve our resources as much as possible. When we took actions - when players made choices - that allowed us to get more XP without setting us back, we all got excited.

It was a positive feedback loop - do cool stuff, get rewarded with the ability to do more cool stuff, which makes us want to do cool stuff even more, then we'd get more rewards, etc.

I like reward systems like that; so, for me, when one kicks in to support the style of play I want, it's great.

Yup, this positive feedback loop is really important and by doing arbitrary leveling, you kill it.

If the D&D loop (be good at killing monsters so you'll get XP, than level up and fight bigger monsters with bigger tools) doesn't please you, the best thing is probably to try another RPG.

 

[Professor Phobos]

I played in a campaign of D&D where the enjoyable thing was to kick ass & dominate in combat as a group. We were on a timeline facing status-quo encounters, so we knew that if we maxed out our XP per day, we'd be "ahead" on the party level - EL scale. Making it easier for us to kick ass, which is what we wanted.

Man, I am bored just thinking about that kind of game. I'm glad you had fun, more power to you, whatever floats your boat, etc, but damn, that sounds exceedingly dull.

If the D&D loop (be good at killing monsters so you'll get XP, than level up and fight bigger monsters with bigger tools) doesn't please you, the best thing is probably to try another RPG.

But if you want to play that kind of game, why not just load up a CRPG or a MMORPG?