Dealing with logical but gamebreaking requests

[Kzach]

Of course you did.

But this isn't snarky at all, right?

Glad to see you sinking to my level.

I said that it was disappointing to me as a player if the more obvious questions had been given no consideration.

The simple fact is this: Unless you are a genius and your players are morons then it's nearly certain that the group of them is smarter than the one of you.

Now I'm just confused.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Seen it. I'm still not getting the connection, but I'll try tilting my head, turning the lights down a bit, and squinting some more.

I admit, my adventure hook was nothing as awesome as taking on a mission to save the World! (of warcraft)

Bullgrit

The connection was pigs ears. Essentially killing boars for loot and XP.

If you had mentioned deer or rabbit ears the joke wouldn't have even formed in my twisted head.

 

[[OMENRPG]Ben]

I think this has been said earlier, but it bears reiterating. Much of these problems arise from poor campaign/adventure design. This is an easy trap to fall into, but you have to be careful to not create quests from higher power groups asking weaker adventurers. If you create a world where the characters are supposedly strong and useful, but are weak and poor, it either is very boring or very silly. So, try to think about the implications and future repercussions of the players involvement and their place in the world.

 

[Lord Captian Tobacco]

Actually, I have worked this one to both extremes.

1) Too much footwork.

The party spent days of play time asking questions, gathering supplies, and generally making a pain of themselves. Took them about three weeks until the expedition was ready.

Doing the research was good. But to say we need X to do Y whilst in front of people who had better networking skills than the wandering adventurers was just foolish.

By the time the heroes crossed the Dark Forest, Swam the Deep Swamp, and climbed the Steep Mountain; the Baron had promised the local Merchants Guild additional concessions if they would dispatch a mid-level group of Commando/Pirate/Ninja/Mages to return the Egg Cup of the Gods.

(I toyed with the idea of a shoot-out for control of the item and who got to return it, but settled for the party being a day late and a dollar short.)

2) Not enough, or Charge!

A basic rescue the princess from the dragon. Said dragon lives in an abandoned temple near a volcano surrounded by the Great Desert.

And they're off...

No one asked the color of the beast.
No one thought about scrolls/potions/rings of protections vs. various elements.
No one asked about back-up resources (theirs or the dragons).
No one thought about rations (each character has on their sheet 'one week- Iron rations'. Occasionally I 'tax' some of their loot to represent spoilage, munchies, etc.)
No one remembered the horse the princess was to ride. (Try spending six hours a day with two people in a saddle for one. Not happening.)
"Dragon slaying sword?" did not even cross their minds...

Swaggering into the lair resulted in 11 deaths out of 14 characters (it was a special request that I had two groups at once).


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Often it is really a question of considering what the players might do (and what their characters might do, often two different things) and planning the likely response.
I had mentioned elsewhere that there are many sources for good information that the players could access. Rather than re-hash that list again, I'll say this: any source you might use to find out more about something is fair game. By no means an exhaustive list:
Travel guides (people, books, agencies)
An embassy (yours or someone else s)
Merchants
Sages (Duh)
Mages
Other adventures (especially the retired ones. "Let me tell you about the time we...")
Street people (see everything- never noticed)
Street kids (Baker-street types)
Experts (Depends on what you need)
Your Guild or Union Hall (the expensive ring and secret handshake are good for something).
Soldiers (Been there, Killed that.).
and

'The party that almost made it but failed at the last moment' - If they're feeling nice that might tell you the villains secret weapon before it gets used on our heroes. Or you might have to buy them a round of drinks first. Or maybe just raise one of their fallen comrades.

 

[LostSoul]

How do you deal with this kind of thing? "The sages are busy with more pressing matters"? (Even though one of their own was just kidnapped?)

If this came up in my game - and I could see it happening - I'd probably think to myself, "Even though they are sages, that doesn't mean they have every ritual out there, but it's possible they have Locate Object." When that happens I assign some probabilities and roll a d6.

(Inspired by eyebeams' blog I changed that to two d6s; one is like the above, and the other is the intensity. Makes it a little more surprising - I don't like binary results. Anyway, it might be high on the d6 (good) and low on the intensity - "The sages have a ritual scroll of Locate Object, but not the ritual itself; if you can get the ritual they'll cast it themselves, but they'd rather keep the scroll for something else. Of course, you can always try to change their minds."

I do have a system that determines what rituals and spells NPC casters have, but it really sucks! I use it in prep only because it's too unwieldy for in-game play and I haven't gotten around to making a better one.)

 

[Bullgrit]

Reading some of the replies, and remembering back to an adventure I was playing a PC in, an idea just came to me.

In one adventure I was a PC in, the local lord put out a call for adventurers. Our party of 3rd-level PCs showed up as one of three groups applying for the job. One group was obviously higher level than us, and the other group was obviously 1st level. The representative for the lord picked our group.

The money/reward was set regardless of which group was picked for the job, so skipping the better team for us was supposed to be a clue. But we didn't get it; we just assumed we were picked because we were the PCs.

The DM explained the plot to me a while after the adventure/campaign failed to take hold. The lord was bowing to pressure from the local guilds to "do something" about the bandits on the road. But the lord was actually in league with the bandits, and so didn't want to really send a team who could actually wipe them out. So he picked our team. Picking the obvious novices would have tipped his hand that he wasn't really trying to kill the bandits.

So, anyway, this brought this idea to mind:

Maybe the folks hiring the PCs in the OP situation refuse to give too much, (enough or any), help because they aren't really interested in rescuing/recovering the person/stuff. Let the PCs' frustration be a clue for them. Maybe it was an inside job, and that's why someone is hiring outside help -- someone who they think will make a big deal looking like their trying to solve the issue, but who can't really because they don't have the ability/power/resources.

But this probably will only work with a group who don't think metagame too much.

Bullgrit

 

[pawsplay]

If they had a horse, some potions, and food, they wouldn't need their daughter back!

Reward:

Whomsoever Slayeth all Ye Goblins Shall be Justly Rewarded with the Hande in Marriage of My [-]Daughter[/-] Horse.

Bonus: I'll throw in some potions and food.

So Sayeth I, Ruprecht the First, King of Scoundrelia​

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As soon as you start letting people marry horses, you're basically opening the gate for people to marry oozes, or intelligent magical items. What kind of society would we have then? What happened to the good old days, when princes and princesses married their cousins?

 

[S'mon]

Sages are very badly designed in AD&D. I don't know how they are designed in 4E, but if they have high level M-U spells or Cleric abilities, perhaps as rituals, these dudes are high level monsters.

Sages are not defined in 4e D&D. The 4e DMG suggests that most NPCs are 1st level minions are similar, that temple priests are typically normal guys (not Clerics) who may or may not have some Ritual casting ability. It suggests the DM could use the MM Human Mage stat block for the combat abilities of a typical NPC 'hedge wizard'.

This gives the DM a lot of leeway, obviously. A Sage could be a min-1 who just knows a lot (Trained: History & high INT, or just an arbitrarily high skill mod), or a Human Mage controller-4 with rituals up to 8th level, or a 12th level Wizard NPC, or whatever the DM wishes.

 

[S'mon]

In my campaign worlds I would be confident enough in having 1st level 4e PCs hired by a local non-Wizard University to recover a missing researcher, the University staff would not have great power, most or all would be noncombatant, but they'd have some Heroic Tier ritual casting ability which they could use to aid the PCs.

BTW This discussion reminds me of a 3e campaign. The ca 12th level PCs were up against a CR 20+ BBEG. In the BBEG's lair they encountered a couple dozen 5th & 6th level Orc warriors, a trivial threat - and these players complained the Orcs were too tough! Groups of Orcs should be 1st level warriors, like in the MM. I was just doing it to screw them over. I had arbitrarily raised the Orcs' levels like in a crappy CRPG.

I was pissed off. Because I am a very simulationist DM by inclination, and the players could not have been more wrong. I had actually pre-calculated the number of 5th & 6th level Orc warriors in the local tribes according to the demographics I used (1/2 number per +1 level) and had them recruited by the BBEG offscreen.

 

[Starfox]

Actually, I have worked this one to both extremes.

1) Too much footwork. [...] (I toyed with the idea of a shoot-out for control of the item and who got to return it, but settled for the party being a day late and a dollar short.)

2) Not enough, or Charge!

A basic rescue the princess from the dragon. Said dragon lives in an abandoned temple near a volcano surrounded by the Great Desert.

And they're off... [...] Swaggering into the lair resulted in 11 deaths out of 14 characters.

This is adversarial gamemastering in the simulationist tradition. You're seeing yourself as a referee arbiting the PCs efforts, not as an entertainer or storyteller nor as a gamist game-master providing in-game tactical challenges.

Not that I mind, I just thought I'd point it out. It seems you think this is the "only" or "natural" way to resolve such "player foolishness". IMO, it is actually a pretty extreme style of gamemastering.