Dealing with an "oldschool" DM

[Storm Raven]

I just wanted to make clear that to me knowing the source of an idea and understanding the idea are two different things. I understand where the idea came from. I don't understand the idea itself.

I know that the 1e and 2e DMGs had language talking about how the material inside was to be verboten to the players. On the other hand, I just don't understand why this should be so, or why this is anything but a ridiculously awful notion. It needs to die a horrible unpleasant death as soon as possible.

Preferably, someone will invent a time machine and edit it out of the original DMG.

 

[Storm Raven]

As a player, I like a bit of mystery and a hint of the unknown. I would be quite sad if the DM handed me a notebook filled with monster statblocks and custom magic item properties that will be used in the campaign to make sure I was informed about thier inclusion prior to the game. According to your methods my sense of mystery would have to be crushed as player to ensure the game was "fair" and to my liking before I agreed to play. That to me is a bigger load of crap than having DM only information.

So, you'd be okay if you were starting a new campaign and your character heard about an orc in a lair in the wilderness. Your PCs decide to head out to confront the orc, but when you get there, it kills all your characters with ease, not taking a scratch from any of your efforts. After the fact the DM casually mentions that in his campaign, orcs are 10 HD creatures with 100% magic resistance and immunity to weapons of less than +5 enchantment. You'd be okay with that?

 

[Raven Crowking]

I understand where the idea came from. I don't understand the idea itself.

Wouldn't that make you, therefore, among the worst possible candidates to determine the value of the idea?

"I don't understand X, but I am expert enough to claim that X is crap" seems somewhat illogical to me.


RC

 

[Nellisir]

As a player, I like a bit of mystery and a hint of the unknown. I would be quite sad if the DM handed me a notebook filled with monster statblocks and custom magic item properties that will be used in the campaign to make sure I was informed about thier inclusion prior to the game. According to your methods my sense of mystery would have to be crushed as player to ensure the game was "fair" and to my liking before I agreed to play. That to me is a bigger load of crap than having DM only information.

I think both of you are getting melodramatic about something pretty silly. Do you refuse to play with anyone that's ever DMed a game of D&D? Should you be banned from games because you've seen the interior of the DMG?

Frankly, I think all the talk about "controlling" is disturbing. DMs aren't there to "control" information, they're there to run a fun game for the players. Part of that fun, for most groups, is a mutual understanding of the rules framework of the game. Players don't need to know the details (though it makes a lovely straw man), but the framework, yes - they should.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I just wanted to make clear that to me knowing the source of an idea and understanding the idea are two different things. I understand where the idea came from. I don't understand the idea itself.

I know that the 1e and 2e DMGs had language talking about how the material inside was to be verboten to the players. On the other hand, I just don't understand why this should be so, or why this is anything but a ridiculously awful notion. It needs to die a horrible unpleasant death as soon as possible.

Preferably, someone will invent a time machine and edit it out of the original DMG.

I agreed that the "thou shalt not read" proclamations are over the top. The idea that there may be things and forces in the game world that the PC's do not know about is perfectly reasonable. In our own scientifically advanced world there are things we do not fully understand. In a fantasy world with wild magic and superpowered creatures the amount of data available to people about the inner workings of the world might be much less.

It is easier to simulate player vs character knowledge when no simulation is required. The players learn things about the world at the same rate as the character. Things that are readliy apparent to anyone living in the world should be known by the PC's as well as thier class abilities. The players don't need to know exactly what creatures are on a particular random encounter list, why the weather pattern in a given area is so strange, or the exact mechanical effects of powers and abilities that they have not yet encountered. These are all examples of DM only knowledge that the players may learn about during the course of the game.

 

[robconley]

And that's simply silly from my perspective. The player's should be able to expect that the rules of the game are the rules being used unless they are informed otherwise, regardless of which core book those rules are in. Saying "that's DM territory, player's don't need to know" changes the game into nothing more than a lottery.

This is true, however the level and treasure system as presented in the 4E DMG are RECOMMENDATIONS not rules like daily powers fire 1/day. This is a point that I find many 4E Gamers fail to realized and of course causes a lot of issues the DM ignores this. What 4E does is expose the math so it there when you need it. It is not there so that every 4e character in any 4e campaign have the correct bag of magic items.

Certainly if you run published adventures you have to keep in mind that they were designed with the math of the DMG. So if you have a low magic campaign sending them into a dungeon of their level may not be the best idea as they won't have the magic items that the authors assume.

The XP shortchanging is a bit fishy IMO. His DM should not be doing that even if he has poor tactical skills. One thing I recommend is that DM should have all his monsters printed on cards for easy reference. When I did that DMing 4e became a lot easier. Everything you need is there the only thing you need to memorize are what the keywords mean.

As for the roleplaying after initiative it sounds like the DM is not doing a good job there. I make it very clear in my games that the players exist within a world that their actions have consequences both good and bad. That best way to deal with the challenges is to roleplay them like you were actually there.

Of course in real life people do attempt to continue to talk even with the other guy start going all out against you. Sometime it works and sometimes its doesn't.

The main problem with my approach is that in real life people have all type of cues other than words, facial expression, body posture, etc, etc. With tabletop roleplaying it is hard to simulate all that even impossible at times. It takes practice by the DM to figure all the little things you need to do make up for the fact we are sitting around a table pretending rather actually being there.

Before I got this stuff down pat my games often had issues like the poster described, mainly because I failed to describe some important detail but also I was too rigid in applying what the players said their character was doing. Sounds like his DM has forgotten those lessons and his players are not having fun because of it.

The best way to deal with this is talk with him outside of the game and be frank with him.

 

[ExploderWizard]

So, you'd be okay if you were starting a new campaign and your character heard about an orc in a lair in the wilderness. Your PCs decide to head out to confront the orc, but when you get there, it kills all your characters with ease, not taking a scratch from any of your efforts. After the fact the DM casually mentions that in his campaign, orcs are 10 HD creatures with 100% magic resistance and immunity to weapons of less than +5 enchantment. You'd be okay with that?

If my character heard about an orc lair and just marched out to invade without a thought, then yes I would get what I deserved. Assuming "orc" means 1HD pushover and basing tactics on such metagame "knowledge" would be my fault and not the DM's.

If I researched orcs and thier lore, there should be information available to indicate that these guys are really tough, fearsome and nigh indestructible. If no information on the creature is available then perhaps it doesn't really exist. If orcs are common enough for the average person to know what an orc is, then frightening tales of thier abilities will exist also. After gathering such info it would be time to decide if confronting an orc would be a risk worth taking.

 

[FireLance]

If my character heard about an orc lair and just marched out to invade without a thought, then yes I would get what I deserved. Assuming "orc" means 1HD pushover and basing tactics on such metagame "knowledge" would be my fault and not the DM's.

If I researched orcs and thier lore, there should be information available to indicate that these guys are really tough, fearsome and nigh indestructible. If no information on the creature is available then perhaps it doesn't really exist. If orcs are common enough for the average person to know what an orc is, then frightening tales of thier abilities will exist also. After gathering such info it would be time to decide if confronting an orc would be a risk worth taking.

And sometimes, even the DM wants the players to metagame a little to speed things up. After all, it does get repetitive if you have to say, "Okay, you can assume that your characters know everything that you know about [insert relevant creature] from the last [insert relevant number] campaigns we've played through" every time it comes up in-game.

 

[Storm Raven]

If my character heard about an orc lair and just marched out to invade without a thought, then yes I would get what I deserved. Assuming "orc" means 1HD pushover and basing tactics on such metagame "knowledge" would be my fault and not the DM's.

If I researched orcs and thier lore, there should be information available to indicate that these guys are really tough, fearsome and nigh indestructible. If no information on the creature is available then perhaps it doesn't really exist. If orcs are common enough for the average person to know what an orc is, then frightening tales of thier abilities will exist also. After gathering such info it would be time to decide if confronting an orc would be a risk worth taking.

Seriously though, how many people would think to do this sort of research for a monster that is as common in fantasy games as an orc? Do you research skeletons, zombies, goblins, kobolds, and wolves as well? This is what I meant when I said that the game turns into a lottery without the common baseline shared between DM and players that is provided by an understood set of rules to be used.

 

[weem]

Just finished reading everything here, and I think what I would say has been covered, but I did want to drop an idea here for the OP...

OP said...

Maybe I'm missing something, but if a creature is hostile towards us and clearly doesn't even want to question us, but draw its weapon, then as far as I'm concerned it's a fight, and negotiations of any kind are no longer an option on the table.

There are times where I, as a DM, have mentioned (or thought) "this could have been handled diplomatically" but for me it is hard to relay that this is an option without killing the suspension of disbelief. I mean, I could say it up front... but that's essentially telling the PC's what to do. I could not draw up the encounter on the mat until the first swing was made, which is a cool idea, but doesn't always work (many times, the players want the room drawn out ahead of time, etc). Generally speaking, I don't like to start combat and then begin negotiating mid-way. I can understand (and have used) the "wait wait, don't kill me" method which works okay, but I don't like to repeat things, so it doesn't occur regularly - maybe it should.

I guess what I am saying is, it's not an easy thing (I would imagine) for most DM's.

With that said, as a player, if the DM was regularly telling me "you could have completed that diplomatically" and I felt like there was never a way to have known that - if I felt that fighting was not my first resort, but was constantly pushed on me, I would be a little frustrated (not much, just a little). I would ask the DM what he/she was expecting - or, to give an example of how we could have engaged in diplomacy during that last encounter, etc - see what they had in mind.

If no ground could be gained there, what I might try (and maybe this is bad advice) is I would start entering encounters without my weapon drawn... I would keep it sheathed even if it felt like a fight was certain... in fact, I would keep it sheathed even as I was getting attacked in the first round, maybe even during the second round, all the while trying my hand at the diplomatic approach. I would try the non-violent approach for each encounter until it either instigated diplomacy or the DM realized that I really did not have a clue of how else to negotiate these encounters, haha.

But that's me pretending to be you in your situation (and pretending to be a bit standoff-ish). As it is, in the games I play even when we do miss out on a diplomatic approach, we generally know it was our fault or know exactly how we closed that window of opportunity, etc. It usually starts with a conversation that is interrupted with an "Oh great, here we go" from one of the players.

---edit---

One more idea as well - don't have the books with me but iirc, you can decide (on the killing blow) whether or not it was a killing blow, or a knockout blow... if i am remembering that correctly, you could state that when each creature drops "oh he falls? well, that was a knockout blow... want to question him later"

---edit2---

Yep, there it is... (PHB p. 295) "When you reduce a creature to 0 hit points or fewer, you can choose to knock it unconscious rather than kill it. Until it regains hit points, the creature is unconscious but not dying. Any healing makes the creature conscious. If the creature doesn’t receive any healing, it is restored to 1 hit point and becomes conscious after a short rest."

So using that, you don't have to miss an opportunity if you feel someone has information you need