Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="El Jefe" data-source="post: 3142974" data-attributes="member: 19990">RA, E13 - Thank you both for the kind words.  I appreciate it.RA - Regarding "gotcha", I feel this is the result of the "verisimilitude" I was trying to inject into the game.  You nailed it, it is a matter of style.  In RL, people experience unpleasant surprises all the time, and that includes the lost car keys that emerge in the silverware drawer a week later.  I wasn't sure just what the PC's were going to do about Private Stander, and the posted actions seemed plausible to me at the time.In fairness, I'd be outraged to roll 32 on a Spot, only to be told, "you didn't look up".  Unless, of course, I specifically mentioned that I was going over every inch of the floor, taking 20 to check the floor for hidden traps or anything else I might find.  I tried to compare that example to what happened in this game, and the only thing I can think of that I maybe should have considered was that some of the characters passed fairly near to Private Stander when they were doing the "horse dropoff" thing, and might have seen him still lying there.  But to me, those characters seemed consumed with making a getaway, not making one last check of the area before leaving to see if they'd missed anything.RA - on another subject entirely, I have noticed the behavior you mentioned, and it both baffled me and frustrated me.  I think two things were going on there.  The first is that Zaeryl is an unusual character, one might say a "difficult" character, and you seemed to be true to the concept you defined for him.  To me, that seemed to be trading off overall party enjoyment for the sake of good roleplaying.  I became conscious of the temptation to judge you as a player because of a conscious decision to play such an extreme character, and I felt that would be unfair to you and would also lower me to a standard of DMing that I didn't want to descend to.  So I simply assumed that you had something worthwhile and meaninful planned for Zaeryl somewhere down the road that would make the intra-party "difficulty" worth putting up with, and resolved to just accept it, even if I didn't particularly enjoy the effect on the party or on the outcome of the adventure.  FWIW, you're not the only player who brought a "difficult" character along for this adventure, although I think Zaeryl stands out in that respect.The other thing that arose out of this was my reaction to this, and it came back to that verisimilitude thing again.  For example, if your character insults a sheep, nothing much happens unless that sheep has some reaction to your body language.  But if your character insults an intelligent NPC, then I don't think that as a player you should be shocked to find that NPC develops some antipathy to your character.  In the context of this adventure, I felt that you thought the NPCs should be pushovers, and became determined to give them a fair shake given their training, organization, and level.  In retrospect, I wouldn't be surprised if you told me that came across to you as if I was trying to "beat" your character with my "characters".  I didn't do that and won't cop to it.  But I am quite guilty of trying to push you into a style of play you may not be comfortable with (contrast this thread with the Laynie and Vanitri adventure!), and that may have detracted from your enjoyment of the game.  "Verisimiltude" is a tool I use to create an immersive environment, one where actions have logical consequences, to the point where the pine forest acts like a real pine forest.  (Trees are not 5' in diameter, and one can easily travel in a "straight" line with a little bit of squeezing, although visibility is often no better than 20-50' in broad daylight.)  But if my efforts to create an immersive environment end up detracting from the enjoyment of the game, all I can do is apologize for overdoing it.  Sorry about that.</blockquote>

Verification