D&D DMing is not playing chess against the players!!

[Ariosto]

When I was drafted to DM a 4e scenario, I know that I played poorly a key monster. I was very little acquainted with the game, and not quite at ease running it.

That encounter was, I am pretty sure, designed with the assumption that the DM would use the monster's powers with the sort of cunning that would come naturally to one who had spent some time analyzing the ins and outs of the game. In my short experience as a player, I had been much more interested in what in modern terms would be called 'fluff'.

The specifics of powers and conditions, and their interactions, may not always match what one would expect from other contexts (such as old D&D). It takes a bit of "rules mastery" to get the most out of them.

Using too little skill provides too little challenge, and makes the game too little interesting to players well versed in game-mechanical tactics. Add in a 6-to-1 advantage in brainpower, and the players present quite a challenge to the DM!

 

[The Shaman]

I think you have the idea of "voting with your wallet" wrong.

No, I got it.

I was alluding to this:

Speaking your mind AND putting your money where your mouth will do more than simply speaking with your wallet.

 

[BryonD]

Fair enough and not worth a lot of debate.

But I don't see a cessation of publishing of crap your don't like as an endpoint of the statement you replied to.

But I'm *VERY* pro speaking one's mind.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The surest way to get what you want is not go speak on message boards, but to buy things that give you what you want. Vote with your wallet, and all that. Flapping your electronic gums will sit a distant second compared to the balance sheet.

I'll get right on that.

Hey I never got a copy of a few modules that I've been wanting maybe I can.........oh. They got pulled didn't they?

Yup. Nothing beats voting with your wallet in a land of free commerce and consumer choice.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Re: Huge Ancient Red Dragon in room 1

Yeah, okay, we were all thirteen years old . . . once.I did shi . . . er, stuff like that, too,* but the goal wasn't to fight - it was to negotiate.



*In my case it was a balrog who demanded the adventurers bring him some macguffin from the dungeon in exchange for their lives.

and

I once put a Pit Fiend in a Tux at the door to dragon's lair. (He was the doorman.) The party was about level 12. The paladin (I should have seen this coming) wanted to attack him. Fortunately, one of the other players talked him out of by saying "don't attack the dungeon dressing."

Nope- in this case, this was explicitly a combat scenario, negotiation was not an option, and it was definitely NOT flavorful window dressing. This was do or die time.

 

[Runestar]

Conversely, my players in my last 3e game wanted me to pull out all the stops. That was exactly the reason why they optimized their PCs, so they could take on whatever the DM threw at them (within reasonable constraints).

Kinda vicious cycle really. I had to optimize my encounters more because the players were tougher, and when the players saw how hard the fights could be, they are glad they optimized and continued to build their PCs stronger, and to properly challenge them...

On a side note, it did give me an avenue to try out all the funky monster/class combinations I had always wanted to play but never had a chance to try out.

 

[Aegeri]

Well, I was previously talking about game development, not game play.

For your case, there's a different dynamic. If you've got personal access to the human being in question ('cause, I dunno, maybe you see 'em at the gaming table every couple of weeks or something) and they are direct impacting your game, you could try the stunningly original ploy of talking with them about the issue. Personal communication - so crazy it just might work!

Well given I am the DM and nobody is planning on assassinating me and taking over any time soon, I'm not so worried. I was actually referring to the OPs post more than my own. Being the DM means you don't have to worry, because any flaw with the game is 90% of the time yours!

Plus it's easily fixed.

 

[fanboy2000]

What exactly do you know about my buying habits?

Pop quiz: what's the last rpg product I purchased?

Villains and Vigilantes?

Spoiler

Whoops! Guess I was wrong! I didn't see the spoiler until I went to reply. Quite a surprise!

 

[Orius]

I once put a Pit Fiend in a Tux at the door to dragon's lair. (He was the doorman.) The party was about level 12. The paladin (I should have seen this coming) wanted to attack him. Fortunately, one of the other players talked him out of by saying "don't attack the dungeon dressing."

Meh, they're 12th level and it's just a pit fiend. They should suck it up!

It's a game. The DM is supposed to challenge the players.

To me it depends on how far the DM takes the "challenge the players" bit. Having Monty Haul games is dull and boring, so most player do like something challenging. However, there is a point where it goes past presenting reasonable and realistic challenges and goes way off the metagame end of the scale. Then the DM is basically trying to counter everything and anything the players can think of and make it impossible for them to do anything, or at least anything they want. Sometimes, but not always, this might be a railroad, but there are other times where it's clear the DM is gunning for a TPK, or he's just taking his aggressions out on the PCs.

I generally prefer the challenges to at least make some sense in light of the game world. I don't mind if there's a dungeon with a big red dragon parked in the first room, I mind if said dungeon is deliberately plopped down in an area the DM has designed for low-level adventuring, or if it is the only dungeon on the map in the campaign's starting area. That is, the DM fully intends for 1st level characters to walk into said dungeon and get toasted by the dragon, knowing that a good chunk of them are going to die. If the DM is sandboxing, yeah this stuff could happen, but it's in poor taste IMO to set up only stuff that the PCs can't handle without providing better adventuring opportunities for them.

Naturally though once the PCs hit name level or Paragon tier or whatever, then let the gloves come off! At this point they should be able to handle a lot of stuff

 

[pemerton]

They play for efficiency, metagaming and viewing critters as "tactical objects only".

sure everyone cna play it how they like, but there's way too much of this, it's pushing D&D into being a board game...

If one considers treating monsters as "critters with tactics and their own minds" as part of presenting a fun challenge for the players, then it all comes together.

I think there's a bit more pressure on the 'encounter' in current D&D, because the designers expect it to take up such a chunk of time.

<snip>

There are indeed prominent board-game features in 4e. The game gets a lot of mileage out of the square grid and moving pieces on it.

At least in my experience so far, 4e's design facilitates a fun and fantasy-laden time at the table in virtue of the GM using the monsters to the full tactical limits of their abilities.

So the system is designed to withstand the pressure that it places upon "the encounter", and to withstand monsters being treated as "tactical objects only".

Relevant features of that design include encounter-building guidelines, monster descriptions which hardcode in a lot of their tactical options, and character-buidling and action-resolution rules which give the PCs a lot of resilience when the chips are down.

Does this turn the game into a (mere) board game? Not in my experience. The key lies in Ariosto's comment about "treating monsters as critters with tactics and their own minds". In 4e this is built into the monster stat block - for example, gnolls and hyenas get bonuses for attacking in packs, so playing them to their mechanical strengths means presenting them as vicious pack animals. It also encourages the players to engage the ingame situation as well as the mechanics - when the players hear the GM talking about the way that the pack of gnolls and hyenas is harrying one of the PCs, they will get the idea of trying to disperse the pack, for example by using a forced movement power. And when they do this, they will reap the mechanical advantage of stopping the monsters getting their benefit for pack attacks.

If no attempt is made by to draw connections between mechanics and the ingame situation, either in narrating the colour of the encounter or in talking about what is going on as actions are resolved, then we might have a mere boardgame. In the same sort of way, AD&D combat is vulnerable to degeneration into a mere dice game, especially when played by players who don't have wargaming experience to fall back on. In practice, I don't now that this is a genuine as opposed to a theoretic risk, at least among players who are actually wanting to play a roleplaying game.