Chumming the dungeon

[Crothian]

Too many people seem to think giving ideas to the DM makes things harder or screws over in some way the PCs. In my games the players do give ideas for their benefit and their determent. I don't just take and use the ones that worsen their situation. I take and use the good ideas. It is not adversarial, it is the players participating in the creativity of where the game is going and how it all unfolds.

 

[Celebrim]

Too many people seem to think giving ideas to the DM makes things harder or screws over in some way the PCs. In my games the players do give ideas for their benefit and their determent. I don't just take and use the ones that worsen their situation. I take and use the good ideas. It is not adversarial, it is the players participating in the creativity of where the game is going and how it all unfolds.

Well, as with many opinions have about how RPGs should be played, probably everyone in this thread is speaking from experience. Some are saying, "This is a great idea [because it sure sounds better than that DM that made me pixel bitch to find the exact clever solution he had in mind]" Some are saying, "This is a terrible idea [because I've been there and changing the facts midgame just leds to adversarial DMing on the one hand or thinly disguised Monte Hallism on the other]." Both sides are right about the particular experience that they had.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I would feel quite guilty if I did this to my players. I don't want them to feel like they can't communicate or speculate for fear of making things worse. I don't want to use my players imaginations against them. If I can't think of terrible horrible dastardly plots and situations, then why am I wearing the DM hat?

Usually because every one else is too lazy to do it.

What, is that not a common experience?

Really, I see nothing wrong with using players' imaginations against them. As long as things aren't exactly as they speculated, they'll never know, and my job got easier.

 

[sev]

at some point this 'chumming' takes away all possibility of real success and for my part, I tend to figure out that the DM is doing this really fast, and generally, once I do, I start finding excuses not to play. If there is anything worse than being on a railroad, its a DM that won't let you fail.

Wow, that's a really extreme response to something that's been explicitly called out as something that only happens occasionally.

I'm not saying that it should be done every single time. That's ridiculous and predictable.

Because I'm willing to hand the story-telling reins over to the players once in a while?

it's not every PC idea you should take. That I totally agree with. But the players are imaginative folk and sometimes I'm not. I know a good idea when I hear one, and sometimes I'll squirrel it away for something else, some other game session or campaign or even a one shot.

I think the idea is only any good with bit of moderation. I'd never use it every time. In fact it's probably best if used rarely.

To do this a bit, especially when you're struggling for ideas or the players are going wildly out of your expected way, is a good thing.

On the other hand, if used carefully, chumming the dungeon can, in a way, be good for the players.

You seem to be arguing with someone who's *not here*.

 

[Pbartender]

Well, as with many opinions have about how RPGs should be played, probably everyone in this thread is speaking from experience. Some are saying, "This is a great idea [because it sure sounds better than that DM that made me pixel bitch to find the exact clever solution he had in mind]" Some are saying, "This is a terrible idea [because I've been there and changing the facts midgame just leds to adversarial DMing on the one hand or thinly disguised Monte Hallism on the other]."

And some of us are saying that, as with any and every technique of DMing in RPGs, it can be either the former or the latter or somewhere in between, depending on the current circumstances of the adventure, the players and the DM.

What a minute.... "interesting, inventive ways to solve the problems" does not equal "imagining a problem you might be able to solve and then assuming that this problem is that problem"... ...That's the exact opposite of an interesting and an inventive solution. It's rewarding player laziness.

Neither does it equal "pixel bitching", as you so eloquently put it.

What I'm talking about is when the players do start throwing out the classic Gygaxian noodling, looking for clues, but the DM purposefully denies them progress, because they haven't yet said the proverbial, "Mother may I". That is railroading just as bad as anything, and penalizes player ingenuity.

I'm talking about "interesting, inventive ways to solve the problems" being interesting and inventive ways to solve a specific problem that I have already presented to the players, but using ways and means that I might not have originally envisioned. If it is a reasonable solution to the problem at hand, then why not let it work sometimes and reward that creativity?

I'm talking about occasionally making minor plot changes, because what the players came up with as a group is better and more interesting than what I imagined alone, and the adventure and campaign will be better for it in the end.

I'm talking about being flexible as a DM, without being an asshat, because DMs are not infallible.

Whatever. I see where you are going with that, but I'm assuming that we are playing with adults here. Run with the whole 'the players aren't Sherlock Holmes' concept, and pretty soon it turns into, 'the players are stupid' and 'treat your players like children'.

Whatever. I see where you are going with that, but I'm assuming that we are playing with a DM who isn't a jerk.

 

[Alt F4]

"Chumming the Dungeon" made me think of a whole party playing their characters like they're Chumlee from Pawn Stars. Which actually could be a lot of fun in small doses.

As for the intended meaning of the term... for a long time I felt that changing my adventures based on those type of comments from players was somehow "cheating". Later I came to see it more as an opportunity to give the players what they want (or avoid what they don't want).

People I game with rarely make comments like "dude, I'd love to get to use my Awesome Against Enemies We Never Fight ability/spell/magic item" or "dude, I'm so sick of vanilla orc cream, when can we get some strawberry dragon sherbert", so when I GM, those in-game comments are a rare source of feedback.

 

[Wik]

Yeah. I love getting ideas from the players. Becuase it often tells you what they WANT in the game, even if they might not realize it. And no, it's not always a bad thing.

For example, one of my players saw an opportunity arise to become king of the feywild. It is now his goal, and it changed how I had my campaign planned out. But still... it could be fun.

If you have a generic monster in your dungeon, and the players look at all the statues in the dungeon and say "oh, crap, there's a medusa in here!" and then start riffing and preparing for the medusa's attack, it's a letdown when they instead fight an owlbear or something stupid. But if you start where they did (ie, a monster that turns things to stone) and then change things around a bit (it's not a medusa! It's a vampire that has an unusual gaze attack!), it actually makes the game seem MORE real rather than less real.

Chumming the Dungeon (not a fan of the term, personally, as it makes me think of reward incentives GMs use to get PCs to visit their adventure sites) is a good GM technique.

 

[darjr]

Yea, when it really works well it is because the players have generated this internal view of the game and what is going on. So much so that verbalize what they think is going on. Sometimes it can be really great to make that more real.

 

[Celebrim]

For example, one of my players saw an opportunity arise to become king of the feywild. It is now his goal, and it changed how I had my campaign planned out. But still... it could be fun.

This is an entirely different thing than the idea you introduce next. If I as a DM planned for the party to go right, but not left, I ought not say, "No" when they decide to go left. If I planned to have a door that could only be breached by answering a riddle, I shouldn't stop a clever idea to bypass the door in some other fasion just because it short cuts what I thought was a particularly clever riddle or puzzle. But what you are suggesting is that which ever way the player goes it ought to hold whatever the player expects.

And frankly, that isn't what the player wants. What the player wants is to be surprised. What the player wants is to actually be clever and figure it out and have a real victory, not to have a victory handed to them based on the first wild idea that they threw out there. Where in the heck are we getting the idea that making the world morphic based on player conjecture is making it 'more real'? Isn't that by definition making it less real? I don't know, maybe most players are wildly different than I am, but I suspect most players will suss out your subterfuge in a hurry and be rather disappointed to find you've been practicing this degree of illusionism. Players hate to have their victories stolen from them, and one way or the other this destroys the believablility of the victory as well as the believability of the narrative.

If you have a generic monster in your dungeon, and the players look at all the statues in the dungeon and say "oh, crap, there's a medusa in here!" and then start riffing and preparing for the medusa's attack, it's a letdown when they instead fight an owlbear or something stupid.

So? Maybe. I try hard to make the answers cooler than the players can imagine. If I don't succeed every time, well, that's the breaks. The alternative is for the players to not be surprised. The alternative is for every tired trope, every simplistic meme, every most obvious alternative to become the exact thing that is there. "There are statues, ergo there must be a creature that turns things to stone around here.", is one of the most tired ideas in dungeon crawling. If some other player spoke up and said, "Gee.. look at all these statues, there must be a medusa around here." and a 'turn to stone' creature came into being because of that, I'd want to brain the player, not because I was 'scared' of the medua, but because its so bloody trite. I have no desire to turn every scenario with statues into something that turns things to stone. I have no desire to be that predictable. Some times statues are just statues. Sometimes some else entirely is going on. I have no desire to reward players for jumping to really dumb conclusions based on the the most shallow of conjectures.

I have no desire to play in that sort of game either.

 

[Celebrim]

What I'm talking about is when the players do start throwing out the classic Gygaxian noodling, looking for clues, but the DM purposefully denies them progress, because they haven't yet said the proverbial, "Mother may I". That is railroading just as bad as anything, and penalizes player ingenuity.

I knew what you were talking about, that's why I said I knew where you were going.

And look, you did.

I'm talking about "interesting, inventive ways to solve the problems" being interesting and inventive ways to solve a specific problem that I have already presented to the players, but using ways and means that I might not have originally envisioned.

I'm absolutely 100% on board with that.

But that's not what is going on here.

If it is a reasonable solution to the problem at hand, then why not let it work sometimes and reward that creativity?

Why not? If it is a reasonable solution to the problem at hand, by all means reward the creativity. I'm very much for that. But that, is not this:

I'm talking about occasionally making minor plot changes, because what the players came up with as a group is better and more interesting than what I imagined alone, and the adventure and campaign will be better for it in the end.

Now we have moved into completely different territory.

Whatever. I see where you are going with that, but I'm assuming that we are playing with a DM who isn't a jerk.

I would like to assume that, but you keep insisting on a DM that is secretly adjusting the game world based on player propositions. And that is going to end up resulting in players that feel the need to hold secret conferences just to keep the terrain under their feet from changing all the time. It's like fudging the dice to achieve particular outcomes, or railroading. I won't argue that there is never any situation where it isn't a good idea because few rules are that absolute, but 99 times in 100 its probably a bad idea.

There are times when players should be allowed to contribute to the narrative and shape things in the game world outside of their own character, but really, the 'secrets' of the game aren't really one of those things that should be included in that. For the same reason most mature players don't want to peek behind the screen and read the module or adventure outline you've prepared, I would think most of them would not think to kindly of you cribbing notes from them. You've stolen their surprise. They don't want to know what is going on. It's one thing to work with your players to create game content. I'm all for that sort of open exchange of ideas. It's one thing to give leave to your player to create what ever he feels appropriate to make his character complete, like leaving the player of a cleric to invent religious phrases and sophistry of whatever sort. But its quite another thing to say, "The players have decided that its Mr. Green in the Library with the Candlestick, so I'll change it so that Mr. Green really did it and not Mrs. White." That's as bad as deliberately playing the monsters stupidly and attacking the highest AC character with the highest hitpoints remaining in the fight.